Tearsheet Podcast: The Business Of Finance

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miler, Tearsheet’s editor in chief.  We’ve covered a lot about buy now, pay later over the years. BNPL’s rise was strong, given how it is embedded into a merchant’s checkout process and appealed to younger customers who preferred financing certain transactions and not the revolving credit of a credit card. Honestly, BNPL’s takeup and growth has overshadowed the emergence of other forms of financing. One of those is lease to own – if you’re my generation and grew up in the US, you’re probably familiar with lease to own through Rent-A-Center commercials. In my mind, that always associated lease to own with some kind of shady business to finance subpar pre-owned furniture with cigarette burns. Neil Desai is my guest today – he’s co-founder and CEO of Kafene, which takes a lease to own financing model and embeds itself within in-store shopping experiences of over 1000 merchants. Embedding lease to own opens up new products and experiences for lease to own customers, pr