Transforming FinTech: Timothy Li on LendAPI’s Rapid Product Launch Platform [SPOTCAST]

Timothy Li, CEO of LendAPI, shares how his platform empowers banks and financial services to quickly launch products with minimal resources. Dubbed the "Wix for FinTech," LendAPI simplifies embedded finance, accelerates innovation, and envisions a future of seamless international payments. Recorded live near Brooklyn Bridge during Techstars New York.

Key Words

• FinTech
• Embedded Finance
• LendAPI
• Timothy Li
• Product Launch
• Banking Innovation
• Techstars New York
• International Payments
• APIs
• Financial Services
• Wix for FinTech
• Microfinancing
• Challenger Banks
• Future of Banking

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Banking on Information. With me here is Timothy Li from LendAPI. This is a live taping, the first one we're doing. This is it. We actually just did a walk over the Brooklyn Bridge right there. And we're going to do a version of Banking on Information. All right. Thanks for having me, man. This is great. So, Tim. Why do you do what you do? Well, first of all, thanks for having me. We just did this whole two and a half mile walk on the Brooklyn Bridge. What is it? Founders Walks? Right. Founders Walks. How do you find more information on Founders Walks? You can actually go to Luma and you can sign up every Sunday, we walk over to Brooklyn Bridge. So come do that.

It's awesome. My second time doing it. Second week in New York. Thanks for the invite. Yeah. Saw this guy twice already in the whole span of, what, seven days? That's it. That's it. This is great. People join this thing. It's a thing. So come on down. So why don't I do what I do? Again, I'm Tim. Hello, everybody. I'm actually here for Techstars New York. Len API is part of the Techstars Accelerator Program in New York City. It's an awesome experience. Len API, in one sentence, we're Wix for FinTech. Banks and financial services companies can actually build products right in our system. Customer experience, decision engine, pricing engine, all the third parties are all plugged in. Within a few minutes, they can press a button and launch a product. It's that magical.

No longer do you have to hire people, waiting for two years, $2 million worth of budget, and miss the entire market opportunity. You can literally sign on, sign up. 30-day free trial. That's how confident we are with this product. So no one will get burnt by working with a tech company, right? So LennyPay. com. Thanks for that. Yeah, so you just want to make it easy for people. Not just sort of take years to build things. Actually use your platform. Do it embedded, right? Embedded finance. We all know that that is the big thing that's going on right now. Tell me a little bit about what type of use cases do people use that come to you for? What type of embedded lending do you do? Right.

We have challenger banks using us for making quick underwriting decisions. We have traditional banks that use the system to just launch their brand new credit card process, right? That's not a revenue model. And we have financial financing folks that are financing their vehicle fees, medical procedures, and we're working with micro-medicine. And this whole finance thing is blowing up. Look at the successes of Affirm, Snap, all the people that they use, that they use in their stores. They're thinking, well, I could do my own greenhouse financing as a replacement to earn that 10%, 12%, 15%. Customers are already paying for it, why not themselves? And when they look at the overall P &L of their business, it could be a mattress business, it could be a tire business, it could be anything, right?

They say, well, my margin is getting depressed because money is getting more expensive. Where do I find more value out of my supply chain? My customers are already paying. Uh, the affirmations, you know, fintechs of the world for all these, why can't I do it? So get a bank, get a charter, get a license. And more than likely their local bank can actually finance these things or just make it into a payments kind of thing. Right. So what's missing piece of technology. They've all tried to convert me here and there, but it's always, you know, Hey, you got to pay us a million dollars or a hundred thousand dollars. Get started. Don't toss me until you do a setup fee. We're going to erase all of that BS. Right.

Right there's business to be done, yeah, and it should be as easy as subscribing to Microsoft Word, right, right? Go to your business, focus on that, you know. This layer upon layer of technology is completely coming off time, right, so that's what we're getting, that's awesome, that's awesome! So you can basically build your own solution right on the platform. So tell me about a customer-what value are they getting out of it from a convenience perspective, from a speed perspective, and from a return perspective? For example, we're going to launch a new microfinancing company literally Monday. We worked all weekend. And this CEO, I mean, nameless, right? He slacked us and said, you know what? We've been working with something. It just wasn't working for the past seven months. Wow.

And we got them up and running a few days, right? So it's just. To be honest with you, there's a lot of vaporware out there. People are yanking people's chains, and it's like a couple thousand dollars here and there, right? And it's not the money for a lot of these folks. It's really the cut market. If you miss that opportunity, you're going to miss a whole lot. So our thing is that, you know what? There's no setup view. It's all there. You can log in, get the account, configure this yourself, and everything that you touch has an API to it. Do it to it. That's it. You don't have to call me. You don't have to rely on me. You don't have to trust me. Trust the platform.

All my guys came up with this stuff. Trust the platform. That's it. Lend API. That makes sense. So there's one thing I love to do, which is called futures thinking. Now, we don't know what the future is going to hold for us, but we can always think about what a possible future could look like. So, Tim, what do you think? If you look 10 years out, what does the banking, finance, and better finance world look like? Yeah. So, fortunately, you know, you and I have been in business for over probably about two decades now. So, we're back 10 years ago. From an advantage point, right? What was broken 10 years ago? It's actually broken down because we have so many different choices, right?

The retailers, the fintechs, you know, there's like 12 different classes now, 12 different bureaus, everyone's got an ML solution, right? How can we put it all together? I feel like 10 years from now, because of our technologies being, you know, sort of revolutionized over and over again every six months now, right? So I think there's going to be a whole lot more offerings, a whole lot more real-time, right? One thing I really wish. Don't get solved for is international payments. There's no reason why I can't send you if you're going to be in Europe next week, right? There's no reason for me to send $10 here to you instantaneously without a lot of polls and grudges and impediments and pending status. You should be instantaneous.

So I'm hoping in the next few years, the next 10 years, I hope, international payments, international credits for the common man like you and I. Be a full-on easier. Please. Right, right, right. So let's assume a world where that is easier. So what do people need to do today to get ready for it? Oh my God. So you invest in FinTech. Correct. VC, so there's a lot of money out there. There's a lot of people with great ideas, right? You invest in FinTech, find founders and get executed. Really push the envelope a little bit, right? I know we are in one of the most regulated industries in the world. Right. But there are founders that have wherewithal of all that, in their heads, right?

Do the right thing, play with the guardrails, but there are a lot of technologies available to us now that we can take advantage of to speed things up, right? That's what happens when you have the guys who can do it. Yeah. So that's it. So get ready. Go get your APIs ready. You may be with Lend API. That sounds like a really good idea. So thank you very much for doing this in person. This is amazing to do right in front of the Brooklyn Bridge here in Brooklyn, New York. This is it. There's no background. This is real. You see the people walking behind us. Thank you. Thank you very much. Until next week, choose to be curious.