The press conference for the LendTech Iran event was held on Sunday, August 5, at the Tehran Chamber of Commerce.
The 1000-person capacity Zargham Hall is set to host the first major LendTech event in Iran on August 7th and 8th, 2024. This event, organized by the Media Innovation Factory Rahkar and supported by businesses such as Manisa, DigiPay, WePad, Ertebat Farda, Abank, Kipa, Lendo, Vensi, Aghsat Market, Ewam, Matin Khodro, Alo qesti, and Tamini Sarmaye Tamadon, will take place from 2 PM to 8 PM over the two days.
The event aims to create a suitable platform for networking, knowledge transfer, product presentation, and overall development of the LendTech ecosystem, and to enhance collaboration between businesses. The event will feature various sections including conferences, exhibitions, networking, product launches, and awards, with the participation of over fifty speakers and more than a thousand active professionals, managers, and experts from the financial and LendTech industries.
In this context, a press conference for the event was held on the afternoon of August 5th at the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, where Reza Ghorbani, CEO of the Media Innovation Factory Rahkar and Vice President of the Transformation, Innovation, and Efficiency Commission of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce; Maziar Nourbakhsh, President of the Transformation, Innovation, and Efficiency Commission of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce; Saeed Rasoulof, Vice President of the same Commission; Mina Vali, Vice President of the Board of Rahkar; and Reza Jamili, Business Development Manager of Rahkar answered journalists’ questions. Below is a report on this press conference.
LendTech is Changing the Rules of Competition in E-commerce
At the beginning of the session, Reza Ghorbani, after introducing the guests and thanking the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, said: “Looking at the billboards around the city, we notice that most of them focus on micro-financing or LendTech and BNPL. Now that this trend is gaining momentum in the country, it seems to be the best time to address it, as this enthusiasm brings both opportunities and challenges. At the Media Innovation Factory Rahkar, we have been aware of the importance of this industry for a long time, and that is why we decided to organize an event on this topic some time ago. This event will be held at Dargham Hall, which, despite its unusual location due to being part of the Wrestling Federation and adjacent to Azadi Stadium, provides a suitable space and can host up to 1100 people in these hot days of August. We started the publicity for the event about a month ago, and we will unveil the LendTech ecosystem map of the country during this event.”
Next, it was Maziar Nourbakhsh’s turn to express his views on the LendTech event. Nourbakhsh highlighted that addressing the challenges related to LendTech businesses, especially after the recent Central Bank resolution, has always been on the agenda of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, and praised the Media Innovation Factory Rahkar’s role in addressing the challenges and issues of the FinTech ecosystem. He said: “Rahkar has always been innovative in defining events on various issues within the ecosystem, similar to the January 9th event, which made significant strides in the cryptocurrency sector. At the Chamber, we have always tried to support such events organized by any entity.”
Saeed Rasoulof also expressed his satisfaction with the Tehran Chamber of Commerce’s participation in organizing the press conference and said: “We are glad that the Tehran Chamber of Commerce stands by friends in such events as the parliament of the private sector. Our effort is to create a platform for addressing challenges and identifying processes that face regulatory issues, and ultimately to advocate for solving these issues.”
Mina Vali emphasized that the LendTech event will provide visibility to lesser-known micro-financing businesses and said: “We started planning for this event a year ago with the intention of compiling a list of all LendTech businesses in various fields. We have identified about a hundred businesses in this area and aim to showcase not only the major players but also the smaller ones.”
Reza Jamili, referring to the unveiling of the LendTech ecosystem map as one of the most significant aspects of the event, stressed that LendTech and its rules provide a new platform for emerging players in e-commerce. Jamili said: “An additional point I would like to add is that besides unveiling the LendTech ecosystem map, which is the most important part of this event, this event carries a message to all active players in e-commerce. After the stabilization of the major players in e-commerce in the 2010s and the seemingly insurmountable gap created, LendTech, with its tools, can rewrite the rules of this space in the country and create an opportunity for competition from scratch. LendTech is an opportunity; an opportunity for those who have been left behind in e-commerce and now find the courage to enter this field. LendTech can create opportunities for those who have missed out on this space.”
The Role of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce is Not Passive
Then, the Q&A session began, where journalists asked their questions. In response to whether the Chamber of Commerce intends to adopt a merely supportive role regarding FinTech issues or go beyond that, Nourbakhsh said: “The role of the Chamber is not passive; we intend, in addition to cultural promotion, to advocate on behalf of the private sector with decision-makers. The Chamber’s endorsement is significant and decisive for the private sector. Before the formation of the committee, particularly in the payment industry, we had no specific activities until Reza Ghorbani joined the Chamber’s board. Now, about 25% of the topics discussed in the committee relate to this issue.
At the Chamber, we have the FinTech Association and the E-commerce Association. We have tried to be result-oriented and focused our energy on clear issues. In the payment industry, we have concentrated on LendTechs and pursued issues related to PSPs, and under this, we have been able to develop an educational program as many people are still unfamiliar with its rules. We have also invited neobanks to discuss their issues together, but I cannot yet say that we have achieved a tangible result in this area, but we are actively pursuing many issues in this field.”
We Need to Reduce the Gap Between the Financial Technology Industry and the Academic Environment
In response to the question about the presence and quality of universities at the event, Reza Jamili said: “From previous events, we have learned that the academic space usually remains detached from the country’s innovation industry. We have tried to bridge this gap. For example, at the January 9th event, there was a demand from students to participate, and we met this demand in a somewhat less formal way.
But at the LendTech event, we have specifically created an environment for students from Amir Kabir University, Tarbiat Modares University, Sharif University of Technology, Allameh Tabatabai University, Science and Technology University, and Science and Culture University to attend. Our events have always been B2B. Now we have made it possible for students from these universities to attend for free, but with limited capacity. Students will make up about 10% of the event participants.”
Jamili, in response to the question about the exact audience of the event, said: “At this event, considering the requests from our partner businesses concerned about the lack of awareness of the LendTech concept in society, we have dedicated part of the content to the B2C space. In pre-events, we tried to explain to the general public what LendTech is and its characteristics, and the data we received showed that 90% of people had not even heard the term LendTech before. Therefore, financial literacy has been maintained as a focus in the event itself, and since the general public is the final consumers, we have seen the highest ticket sales among all the events we have organized so far.”
Mina Vali, in response to the question of whether lack of awareness about LendTech rules might trap people into purchasing many goods and services using this method and then finding themselves overwhelmed by various installments, said: “This is one of the dark aspects of this field, and increasing individuals’ awareness of it is one of our concerns. As you know, at Rahkar, backed by years of experience in financial technologies, we have repeatedly warned about platforms where fraud might occur. Some of the event attendees will be ordinary people, and therefore we have designed the event to be educational for this group so they do not fall into these traps.”
Credit Rating is a Valuable Asset
In response to whether we might officially witness agreements for collaboration among ecosystem players at the event, Reza Ghorbani said: “Facilitating interaction among the components of the LendTech ecosystem is very important and has been pursued in industry-specific spaces for a long time. The issue of LendTech companies collaborating on credit scoring and creating a shared blacklist has been discussed multiple times.
However, concerns about sharing information among industry players still exist, and on the other hand, regulation has placed data access in the hands of the Iranian Credit Rating Consulting Company, which has exacerbated this gap. We preferred to raise these concerns as event outcomes to foster culture-building around them and reduce the divergence within this ecosystem. However, we do not intend to witness such agreements at the event. We do not aim to enter regulatory areas and critique them but rather to clarify the frameworks of LendTech.”
Meisam Soleimani, Content Manager at Rahkar, regarding the necessity for LendTech companies to collaborate on credit scoring, said: “We have pursued the creation of a shared blacklist among LendTech companies extensively. Over the past two years, LendTech companies have been deeply involved in credit scoring due to their lack of data access. However, now, with the experience of various international LendTech companies, the discussion on credit rating and creating shared lists of defaulters has become a more professional topic. Currently, the credit rating and blacklisting issue is still in its infancy, and we hope to see concrete results in the coming years.”
At the end of the conference, Reza Ghorbani, referring to the challenges of organizing the event, said: “Despite the financial pressures and the massive amount of work involved, we are hopeful that this event will be a turning point for the industry and significantly enhance the ecosystem’s growth.
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