The leading digital services provider of the country, Robi, has come up with a unique smartphone financing campaign named ‘Phone Loan’ in order to facilitate people to avail smartphones on credit. Using the Alternative Credit Scoring (ACS) solution powered by Blockchain and Big Data Analytics technology, the handset financing campaign aims to find out people looking for collateral free loans to purchase handsets.
The phone loan campaign offers handset loan to eligible Robi and Airtel customers with conveniently priced EMI facility without having any credit card. The company would identify eligible customers based on their telco data usage ensuring customers data privacy and security.
Due to afforability issue 4G handset penetration in Bangladesh is approximately 42%, which reflects a large portion of the population is still digitally excluded. Digital divide is prominent in low income and rural people and these groups of customers neither can afford to purchase their desired smartphones making one-time payment nor they have any credit card to purchase smartphone with EMI.
Eligible customers will be notified through SMS for handset financing and after getting sms notification, they can check and verify their eligibility through the Phone Loan app or website. The eligible customers can also purchase their preferred handsets from Robi’s walk-in-centers (WIC), r-store, phone loan app and website by making a one-time down payment. The rest of the amount can be paid in equal monthly installments with the installment duration being available from six to twelve months based on customers’ convenience.
Being the largest 4.5G service provider of the country with more than 11,000 4.5G sites, the campaign will promote the digital inclusion of customers and enable them to get a new experience in life. Robi attempts to bridge the digital divide by extending credit in the form of phone loans to people with a lack of credit history through the campaign.
