Challenge

Inter.mx began in 2020 as an insurtech and insurance broker making it easy for customers in Mexico to find and sign up for pet, car, and health insurance. A subsidiary of Latin America’s largest insurance broker, Interprotección, Inter.mx aimed to significantly reduce the complicated, paperwork-heavy process of taking out a policy that had contributed to Mexico’s low insured rate. Within a short time, the company saw enrollment surge—a clear signal that its efforts were working.

But the company had even bigger ambitions: Inter.mx wanted to see every Mexican covered by insurance—a major undertaking in a country where many people don’t consider insurance as an essential expense.

“People in Mexico see insurance as a very large expense, and the principal reason users cancel their policy is because they don’t use it,” said Luis Esteban Martínez Luengo, director of business development at Inter.mx. “If they don’t use it, they think that’s a big expense they can’t justify.”

In 2023, Inter.mx started work on a new initiative called “Te Regalamos Un Seguro” (“We Give You Insurance”), with the goal of drastically increasing the country’s insured rate. The project entailed launching a freemium subscription model, in which people could sign up for health insurance or mobile phone insurance at no cost and receive basic coverage. For more complete coverage, they could opt to sign up for a paid subscription.

With its freemium model, Inter.mx hoped to shift the cultural perception that insurance is expensive and unnecessary by making it more accessible and affordable. It also marked the company’s own shift from insurance broker to insurance provider, building a powerful new revenue stream.

To roll out this new subscription offering with tiered pricing, Inter.mx needed a recurring revenue system that could enable easy online payments, automate billing and collections, and help prevent fraudulent payments—a growing concern among customers and ecommerce businesses in Mexico. Inter.mx began the search for a payment provider that could not only help it launch this new offering, but also help it launch quickly.

Inter.mx planned to unveil Te Regalamos Un Seguro on the eve of the 2023 F1 Mexico City Grand Prix, where Inter.mx was one of the main sponsors of both the event and the Red Bull Racing team—the team of renowned Mexican racing driver Sergio “Checo” Pérez. With more than 400,000 attendees and millions more watching from home, the event would be a prime opportunity for Inter.mx to announce its new offering in a video advertisement featuring Pérez himself.

Solution

Inter.mx selected Stripe for the launch of Te Regalamos Un Seguro because Stripe’s comprehensive suite fulfilled its need for a flexible subscription management solution. Additionally, Stripe’s ease of integration would help the company stay on track with its key target launch date.

Inter.mx used Stripe Payments to enable reliable, secure payment support for a simple, easy transaction process. The company used Stripe Billing to power its subscription services with both free and paid options to create a freemium model. With Billing, Inter.mx could automate workflows to easily collect recurring payments. The Billing API could also enable Inter.mx customers to choose from multiple subscription offerings and make changes to their subscriptions on a self-serve basis. Features such as Smart Retries, which uses machine learning to retry failed payment attempts at the best possible times, could also help reduce churn and recover revenue.

Inter.mx also used Stripe’s Optimized Checkout Suite, which includes Stripe Elements—a set of embeddable UI components that help create a simple checkout flow and drive conversion. Elements enabled Inter.mx to easily add new payment methods, such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, for a quick, easy checkout experience. The company also added Link, Stripe’s accelerated checkout option that autofills customers’ shipping and payment details for faster transactions.

To prevent fraud, Inter.mx integrated Stripe Radar, a machine learning–powered solution that trains on billions of data points to automatically detect and block fraud.

Results

Inter.mx integrates Stripe to launch new subscription offering within seven weeks

Working closely with Stripe, Inter.mx completed its Stripe integration in less than two months, with five days to spare ahead of the F1 Mexico City Grand Prix. Inter.mx released an ad featuring Checo Pérez announcing Te Regalamos Un Seguro, which aired during the race and has since been viewed more than four million times on YouTube.

“The implementation through APIs was very simple,” said Martínez. “We completed the implementation in record time.”

With a new freemium model, the conversion rate to paid subscriptions reaches 8% within six months

Inter.mx aimed to encourage more Mexicans to sign up for insurance, and its free coverage plan received a welcome reception with thousands of sign-ups immediately after the launch. Six months after launch, about 8% of free subscribers had converted to paid subscriptions, creating a new recurring revenue stream for Inter.mx and helping to shift the cultural perception around insurance.

Radar helps Inter.mx maintain a low fraud rate as subscriptions grow

As Inter.mx focuses on making insurance simple to access for all Mexicans while growing its Te Regalamos Un Seguro project, fraud rates have remained low with Radar’s early detection of suspicious transactions.