You are Esteban Carvajal-Quintero, 39, commercial director of Pago Andino, a Bogotá mobile-payments fintech. The board wants the firm to enter the base of the pyramid — the informal micro-merchants it has never served. You have six weeks to recommend how.
The situation
Pago Andino's QR-payment app is the default tool for established small businesses in Bogotá's estratos 4 to 6 — formal shops, restaurants, services. That market is maturing. Growth has slowed for three quarters. The board, prompted by a social-impact investor, has asked one question: can Pago Andino profitably serve the city's informal micro-merchants — the street stalls, the home-front tiendas, the market vendors of estratos 1, 2 and 3?
It is roughly 420,000 merchants — far more than the firm's entire current customer base. They are also cash-dominant, thinly banked, and reachable on a smartphone only sometimes. Your VP of Product has a quick answer: take the existing app, drop the price, simplify the screens, ship it. Your head of new markets thinks that answer guarantees failure. Both want your recommendation by the board meeting.