Design Buy-Now-Pay-Later That Works for Market Traders

Buy-Now-Pay-Later is growing across Nigerian e-commerce but almost exclusively serves salaried workers with verifiable income. The 40 million informal market traders who need working capital to restock daily are completely excluded. Their creditworthiness is real — built on daily cash flow, community reputation, and trade associations — but invisible to conventional fintech. Your challenge is to design a BNPL product for market traders that uses alternative data to assess creditworthiness (sales patterns, group savings participation, trader association membership, etc.) and disburses working capital for restocking within four hours of application. Submit a financial product design (max 10 pages) including: credit scoring methodology, loan structure and repayment mechanics, fraud prevention, a risk model showing expected default rates and how you price for them, and a plan to pilot with 500 traders in one market. Judging criteria: 40% credit model soundness, 30% user experience for informal traders, 20% risk management, 10% pilot plan.