Marlene Garayzar, Stori Card | Fintech for Financial Inclusion [Ep. 22]

The audio and video are in Spanish. These notes are a translation.

In recent years, fintech has been a major force of innovation in the financial sector in Latin America. However, financial inclusion for people who are using a credit card or a bank account for the first time is a real challenge.

Fortunately, there are fintechs like Stori that are focusing precisely on providing digital financial services for people with lower incomes. Today, we talk with its COO and cofounder, Marlene Garayzar, about how fintechs promote financial inclusion and the challenge of going from working for a company to founding one.

To date, Stori has raised almost 50 million dollars from investors like Lightspeed Ventures, Source Code Capital, and Vision Plus Capital.

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The Leap from Working to Founding

[1:38] - How did Marlene arrive at the world of startups?
- Generating social impact
- Jobs in the financial sector and in fintech
[5:58] - What is Stori and what problem or need does it solve?
- Financial inclusion for people with fewer resources
- Offering an international Mastercard credit card online
[9:36] - What key lessons did Marlene learn in the financial sector that helped her found a fintech?
- Always taking loan risk into account
- Running strategies based on data
[12:53] - Marlene’s transition from working at corporations and fintechs to founding on her own
- Finding partners with knowledge of the sector and the business
- Surrounding yourself with people whose skills complement yours
- Being willing to sacrifice what you do now in order to do what will make you happy in the future
[19:00] - Recommendations for people who are thinking about founding a company
- Direct communication about the things you want to do

Real Financial Inclusion

[20:38] - Why have the big banks and traditional institutions not been able to increase financial inclusion for people with lower incomes?
- Banks have a different risk tolerance
- Services focused on people with higher incomes
[27:00] - What do you think is missing for this innovation to increase financial inclusion?
- A second chance for customers with a poor credit history
- Rebuilding customers’ credit history
[30:40] - Strategic reasons for launching a credit card as the first product
- A product the founders knew very well
- A lack of financial inclusion
- There is no significant competition in the market
[32:23] - Plans for complementary products
- Building a digital bank and offering products that complement the initial offering
- Evaluating the products best suited to Stori’s target audience
[34:36] - Impact of the fintech law on the sector’s competitiveness
- Greater transparency and regulations in the sector
- Greater limitations for companies on using savers’ money and diversifying.

Early-Stage Recruiting

[39:40] - Stori’s recruiting philosophy and how it changed over time
- Always hiring and evaluating potential candidates
- Evaluating hiring needs
- Training and coaching of the teams
[44:23] - How do you balance the decision between hiring a great candidate versus someone who does not have the necessary experience, but shares the company’s mission?
- Humility and a desire to learn in order to adapt to the needs of the business
- Balancing key knowledge with the person’s soft skills
- People who believe in financial inclusion and are open to change

Tweet Round

[48:28]
- Recommended book: Atomic Habits
- Changes in the startup ecosystem: greater collaboration among startups in the financial sector
- Recommended entrepreneurs: Iñigo Rumayor of Arcus

Episode Mentions

You can find Rodrigo on Twitter and LinkedIn

Entrepreneurs: Freddy Vega of Platzi

Investors: Pete Flint of NFX

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Follow Enzo Cavalie on X: @enzocavalie.