IE Business School.

Corporate entrepreneurship, The seven cannonballs: Alina, Alejandra,

Cezar, Daisy, Grace, Ignacio, Unai
“Yape” is a fintech created from within the Banco de Crédito del Perú (BCP)​1 with the aim of
eliminating the use of cash and to make small money transfers without asking for a bank
account making it easier to pay. It is a payment P2P (peer to peer) app and as it was
mentioned before, this fintech was developed as an innovation within the bank and it is
rumored that it will eventually operate separately as a payment method and link with
competitor banks.
BCP as the leading bank in Perú, launched this fintech start up in 2017 reaching 1 million
users in their first 18 months and now it has over 4 million users (13% of Perú´s population).
The initial target was only 150,000 users. Yape was born in the BCP’s innovation center:
“Centro de InnovaCXión” where according to their product owner they decided to analyze
the journeys of each customer segment and identified that young people (18 to 35 years old)
were extremely social but their payments were not as fluid as their social life and that is how
in only 16 weeks the app was launched​2​. They started testing the app within the BCP main
office where they have several stores and it was adopted quickly among their employees.
Inside the innovation center, they work fluently as every 14 days they have to launch new
functionalities to the app or any other product, they also work by teams of different
backgrounds.​3 ​We can say that Yape is successful as, for now, more than 8 million
transactions have been done through the App, a total volume of 450 million soles. Also, they
aspired to get 10 million users by the end of the year. 4​
Yape was at the beginning targeting C2C operations meaning that it was meant for payments
directly between two people. However, due to the pandemic it was quickly escalated to a
B2C model where shops, taxis, and even informal sellers can get paid through Yape with a
QR code. Also they have innovated further with YapeCard which aims for business or people
that don’t have a bank account which is a great part of ​Perú´s population. During the
pandemic this has been extremely useful since a lot of people were afraid to use cash, this has
especially benefited small businesses like bodegas of informal taxis which now get up to 60%
of their sales through Yape.​5
Yape has been quite successful in ​Perú especially considering that only 2 in every 10
Peruvians have a bank account and about 4 million people have a credit card. Yape is an
incredible opportunity for the country to become more formal and stop its dependence on
paper money especially in pandemic times. However, Yape have a huge challenge ahead
since competitor banks BBVA (#2), Scotiabank (#3) and Interbank (#4) have allied to create
a multibank paying platform called PLIN which is a function inside each bank’s app. Here
Yape being owned by the biggest bank and the app with more users have the challenge to be
able to unify all banks within its platform which will, at the end, give the most benefit to the
customer.

https://www.viabcp.com/canales/yape?&ds_rl=1282408&ds_rl=1287606&ds_rl=1287606&gclid=Cj0KCQiAh4
j-BRCsARIsAGeV12CY4mqC6BiEfJ0ZUFzkbPjOzUo_t2Qejo2vhgWahdbPkgLgp3CjwYAaAti4EALw_wcB
&gclsrc=aw.ds
2

https://semanaeconomica.com/economia-finanzas/banca/213482-bcp-esperamos-incorporar-150000-usuarios-al-
app-yape-en-el-primer-seme
3

https://www.ebankingnews.com/noticias/bcp-tuvimos-125-anos-de-exito-con-un-modelo-hoy-estamos-en-proce
so-de-cambio-0036928

4
​https://gestion.pe/blog/innovar-o-ser-cambiado/2019/09/innovar-yape.html/?ref=gesr
5
​https://gestion.pe/blog/innovar-o-ser-cambiado/2020/09/yape-yapecard.html/?ref=gesr
IE Business School. Corporate entrepreneurship, The seven cannonballs: Alina, Alejandra,
Cezar, Daisy, Grace, Ignacio, Unai

Appendix 1: How to use Yape

Source: https://www.viabcp.com/canales/yape
IE Business School. Corporate entrepreneurship, The seven cannonballs: Alina, Alejandra,
Cezar, Daisy, Grace, Ignacio, Unai
Appendix 2: Yape Users

Source: https://gestion.pe/blog/innovar-o-ser-cambiado/2020/09/yape-yapecard.html/
IE Business School. Corporate entrepreneurship, The seven cannonballs: Alina, Alejandra,
Cezar, Daisy, Grace, Ignacio, Unai
Appendix 3: Yape’s transactions

Source: https://gestion.pe/blog/innovar-o-ser-cambiado/2020/09/yape-yapecard.html​/
IE Business School. Corporate entrepreneurship, The seven cannonballs: Alina, Alejandra,
Cezar, Daisy, Grace, Ignacio, Unai
Appendix 4: Yape Timeline

Source: https://credicorp.gcs-web.com/static-files/6dfaebfa-d2e5-4620-a5d9-7f57e568a3a9