Dey: Transforming Consumption Through Income Liquidity

When Dey, salary-on-demand startup, emerged to help address the lack of financial liquidity afflicting almost three quarters of Mexican laborers, it did not foresee that it would also change their consumer behavior. Moving past using it only month-end, unexpected and emergency expenses, early adopters have opted to use Dey regularly throughout the month, reports Founder and CEO, Oliver Babini. 

“Prior to the market launch of Dey we anticipated that the average user would defer to our financial services an average of seven times per month. To our surprise the average user is using our platform about twenty times a month, indicating that their consumption behavior has become more distributed. This is having a ripple effect on local economies that could help expedite Mexico’s economic recovery,” Babini told Mexico Business News. 

Dey emerged in response to an observed need for a solution that could deliver the income liquidity that afflicts at least seven of ten Mexican laborers that live paycheck to paycheck. Before the emergence of salary-on-demand services, collaborators were forced to request loans from their employer, family, friends and traditional banks to cover their expenses. The latter of which promotes an unnecessary debt cycle estimated to overwhelm at least 50 percent of households, according to the National Survey on Household Finances (ENFIH). Salary-on-demand allows collaborators to avoid this snare altogether by putting at their disposal the corresponding salary of their completed hours. 

Over the course of the year, Dey has conferred more than 5,000 users with the financial freedom, education and data to take control and administer their income. Education campaigns have allowed individual users to gain actionable insight from their personalized consumption reports. With greater visibility of their personal finances, people have used this information to allocate their income effectively, using on average only 35 percent of their income before their net pay. Altogether, this has helped establish consumer confidence among early adopters, who have since expanded their use of the platform to include grocery, e-commerce purchases and even mundane daily purchases. 

“By eliminating the concept of a payday, consumers’ purchase power is no longer limited to short intervals after the 15th and 30th of every month. Instead, users have the capacity to actively participate in localized economies throughout the month, at the benefit of businesses and Mexico’s macroeconomic recovery,” said Babini.