New Product Launched 80% Quicker with VGS

Expanding from Loans to Banking Products

Imagine transferring to a new country. You arrive in a new world carrying all of the money you have, on your person—in cash (we’re talking thousands; you can’t open a bank account before you get there).

Fast forward 3 months, 6 months, a year… You’re working for a large enterprise, being well paid, but because you’re not a citizen and have no in-country financial history, not a single financial institution will give you the credit you need to grow your new life. You’ll have to wait SIX years to get a loan at a decent rate; to buy a car, further your education, etc.

Depending on your life experience, this may sound like a far-fetched scenario. But it’s painfully true for the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who arrive, live, and work in the United States each year.

With an intimate understanding of this problem, the founders of Stilt set out five years ago to make financial products simple, fair, and honest for immigrants. By offering unsecured personal loans on their lending platform, they grew to have customers from 150 countries.

As their customer base grew, the Stilt team got clear feedback that they needed even more banking services. Top among the demands: access to a bank and debit / credit card.

PCI Level 2 Compliant in a Week

“We knew if we did PCI by ourselves, it would take at least 2-3 months... And what I have learned from experience is that compliance is a headache. With VGS, we were able to get running on the platform and become PCI level 2 compliant in less than a week, with very little effort on our part.”

- Priyank Singh,
Founder

The most important thing for the Stilt team was achieving PCI Level 2 compliance quickly. Having gone through other compliances internally and having the infrastructure in place for PCI, they knew they would need 2 - 3 months to get PCI compliance if they built it on their own.

Priyank said, “For our case, our infrastructure is ready to get PCI, but the process of hiring a third party and getting auditing done, and going through that painful and time consuming process remained. Not to mention the time engineering associates would be pulled away from their core work.”

By using VGS, Stilt was able to secure PCI Level 2 compliance and go live in just one week, without the pain or diverted internal resources. In addition, VGS had the javascript Stilt needed to actually show the debit card numbers to their customers.

Strong Customer References Key Decision Making Criteria

Stilt evaluated 8 or 9 vendors as they looked for the right PCI solution. But as a Y Combinator company, they had an extensive network to draw on for guidance and reference in the selection process. The feedback Stilt received for other companies similar to VGS was that their APIs weren’t up to par.

With VGS, it was another story. Priyank says, “We reached out to a bunch of folks who are using VGS. The feedback that we got was that VGS was the best way to move forward since we were optimizing for speed. From all over the place, we got good feedback. That's why we went ahead with VGS.”

He went on to share a story about reaching out to their customers as they were developing their banking product. Among other questions, he asked what they were doing to fix compliance and card data. Their answer? “Oh, we use VGS.” Priyank said, “We heard it from our customers who are using it. For me, a referral like this is the best endorsement.”

Strong Technical Support

“We worked closely with the VGS engineers and support team. They helped us a lot to get up live and running,” said Priyank. “Responsiveness was above expectations. If I had to rate it on a one to five scale, I’d give support a five.”