Last week NetPosti (Itella, local postoffice) provided new payment option for their virtual post office in Finland.
Idea is neat and I already see global copy cats to use same idea in larger percpective. When consumer gets bill to his virtual mailbox hosted in this case by Itella, he has option to pay bill traditional way or apply loan from Collector AB (Swedish consumer
loan company). Appliaction is simple process, consumer clicks apply loan, fills out only his email address, social security number, mobile number and selects his yearly income. After that he is identified with online banking codes (legal and valid method in
Finland), after successful authentication his credit score is automatically checked and loan is approved. Now he can pay his bill by new loan. Rest of the loan stays inside Netposti system for future payments.
In my mind similar and really global idea would be for example Company X hosted Virtual MailBox, where consumer gets all his bills and other mails. There would be several payment method inside and then for example in my scenario several loan providers. Consumer
would apply loan and would get approval instantly. Like in case Finland, rest of the money would stay in Virtual MailBox. And adding new loan to pay old loan would be restricted.
To make this even lucrative, all online stores could add this as payment option, where all the online orders are sent. Only when payment is done, orders are shipped.