Minou Goetze teaches decision psychology at the Fresenius University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg and consults for the debt collection company PAIR Finance on the side. She knows: "Many people are contacted by a debt collection agency at least once in their lives. Debts are quickly incurred when the bill disappears under a pile or you've been away for a while. The question then is how to deal with it."

FinTech PAIR Finance is one of the success stories in the German start-up scene. Co-founder and CEO Stephan Stricker had the idea of optimizing collection processes based on AI. PAIR Finance now works for major customers such as Zalando - which promptly acquired a stake in the company.

Pair Finance is one of the few German financial startups that actually makes money. And not recognizably at the expense of growth. But rather, to a certain extent, as a result of growth. Specifically, revenues more than doubled in the past fiscal year. How does Pair Finance do what other fintechs don't even try?

PAIR Finance is now offering its technology-driven debt collection approach to Austrian companies. With the help of artificial intelligence, behavioral research and data science, PAIR Finance enables a consumer-centric customer experience in debt collection and receivables management.

Berlin-based fintech Pair Finance, which specializes in receivables management and collection, has announced the expansion of its business into the Austrian market. The company is targeting the country's leading e-commerce, banking, telecommunications and insurance companies. Barna Bokor will take over the position of country head in Austria. He joins from online bank ING Austria.

Market entry in the neighboring country seems obvious. The same language and similar consumer behavior presumably do not require any special adjustments to technology and processes. As Pair Finance emphasizes in its press release on the expansion, it sees Austria as a strategic market for its business model. This is because retail there is currently undergoing a structural change driven by exponential technological development.

"The demand from our German clients was certainly one of the drivers to enter the Austrian market," says Pair Finance founder and CEO Stephan Stricker in an interview with brutkasten. Previously, he says, they were only able to operate in Austria on a small scale. But now Pair Finance has registered a business here and obtained a collection license.

Pair Finance, a company for AI-based debt collection and receivables management, has analyzed in a study which debtor types there are and how best to address them in order to receive payment as quickly as possible. The survey was led by behavioral researcher Dr. Minou Ghaffari and evaluated around 400,000 cases and the associated AI-optimized communication in anonymized form.

The goal is to get people out of debt quickly, says Pair Finance CEO Stricker. "The best way to do that is digitally. People look at their smartphones almost 100 times a day, use them to take out policies and buy products - so why don't we in debt collection also communicate digitally with our debtors as part of the value chain?"

"Typically, these are customers who are in a difficult financial situation and tend to reject any payment solution," Minou Ghaffari tells WELT AM SONNTAG. She heads the behavioral research department at debt collection provider PAIR Finance.

To create such a typology, Fintech Pair Finance, which specializes in debt collection, analyzed data from more than 400,000 debt collection cases and the corresponding debtor communication. This resulted in a customer typology study that defines a total of 16 different debtor types. (€)

"Our message comes via SMS, WhatsApp and e-mail and lands on a wearable, smartphone or tablet. This finally puts an end to the age of confrontational, monotonous mass communication by reminder letter or telephone, and communication takes place at eye level," clarifies Stricker. According to Stricker, all outbound customer communication takes place via AI. (Print article)