Partner overview
Kikoff is a fintech company on a mission to make credit accessible for everyone. Its affordable, easy-to-use tools — monthly plans starting at $5 a month, paired with a credit limit between $750 and $3,500 — help everyday consumers build positive payment history with all three credit bureaus, creating a foundation for broader financial access and long-term financial health. Most Kikoff users are Millennials or Gen Z earning under $75,000 a year, and the majority support dependents; about 39% are hourly employees. They come to Kikoff with practical, near-term goals — qualifying for an apartment, buying a car, consolidating debt, or covering an unexpected expense.
Engine by Gen is the embedded-finance and marketplace technology that connects consumer brands to the right financial products at the right moment. Through a single integration, Engine gives partners access to 1,300+ enterprise relationships and deep product-provider coverage across personal loans, credit cards, debt relief, cash advance, banking, and insurance — all through one point of contact, one compliance process, and one integration.
The opportunity
Kikoff customers work hard to build their credit, but the mainstream lending market still charges an unfair premium for that progress: applicants with low credit scores face personal loan denial rates 4.5x higher than those with strong credit, and when they are approved, they often pay an estimated $3,400 more per year in interest and fees.
As Kikoff's customers improved their credit profiles, the opportunity became clear: create a natural path into lending before those customers went looking elsewhere. Kikoff had already built the trust — it needed a way to put it to work, without disrupting the credit-building experience it had spent years earning.
Why Kikoff chose Engine by Gen
Kikoff's decision to expand into lending was built on a foundation it already trusted. Having an established relationship with Engine, Kikoff knew the infrastructure was in place to connect its customers with pre-qualified loan offers quickly and seamlessly — without disrupting the experience it had worked hard to build. When the moment came to take the next step, Engine was the natural choice.
Integration
Engine provides the loan-matching infrastructure behind the Kikoff personal loan marketplace. When a Kikoff user is ready to explore borrowing options, Engine powers the experience that lets them search for and compare pre-qualified offers from real lenders, matched to their specific credit profile, financial situation, and product eligibility — inside the experience Kikoff has already built.
Kikoff builds the credit profile; Engine matches the user to a real loan they can actually use. Users move from invisible to in-market, with a demonstrable, connected path between the two.
Results
The integration converted trust into capital quickly. In its first five months, the partnership funded more than $5 million in personal loans for Kikoff users — capital that, in many cases, wasn't accessible to them before they built their credit with Kikoff.
The credit impact was just as significant. Users who secured a loan through Engine saw their credit score climb an average of 59 points from the time they opened their Kikoff account to the time they funded their loan — moving from an average starting score of 576 to 635 at funding, often the difference between a denial and an approval. For users who started below 600, Kikoff's credit-building product delivered an average 25-point increase in the first month alone and an 86-point increase over a full year of on-time payments, laying the groundwork Engine's lending offers could then build on.
A strong partnership, a bright future
By the time a Kikoff user reaches a partner product through Engine, they've already done the work — paying into their credit profile, watching it improve, and showing up month after month. That groundwork is what makes Engine's matching effective: users arrive not as anonymous applicants, but as consumers with a demonstrated trajectory. Kikoff's product suite can be fully white-labeled, giving Engine's broader partner network a model for how credit-building and lending can work together — a real, tangible bridge from building credit to using it, integrated into the platforms and journeys where consumers already show up.
- Industry
Credit-building / consumer fintech
- Business Need
Give credit-building customers a natural next step into lending, without disrupting the trusted Kikoff experience
- Solution
Engine by Gen embedded loan-matching marketplace, surfacing pre-qualified personal loan offers matched to each user's credit profile
- Results
• $5M+ in personal loans funded through the integration in 5 months
• +59 points average credit score increase from account open to loan funding
• Average score movement from 576 to 635 at funding
• 25-point average score increase in month one for users starting below 600
• 86-point average increase over year one with on-time payments
“Through our partnership with Engine, we were able to extend the value of the Kikoff experience beyond credit-building and help users access lending opportunities that aligned with their progress, profile, and needs.”