Partnership-led growth toward Home Credit

The SM Store deal shows Salmon is trying to buy distribution in chunks instead of building it branch by branch. In store based lending, scale comes from standing where shoppers are already choosing a phone, appliance, or household item. Salmon already reaches more than 5,000 partner stores, but Home Credit is in 18,000 plus, so a national chain partnership is the fastest way to close that gap and put more loan volume in front of the same underwriting engine.

• SM Store is not just a logo partnership. Salmon launched installment lending there in 2023, and later used key SM locations to distribute its Access Card in Metro Manila. That shows SM sites are being used as recurring origination points for both first loans and follow on credit products.
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• The operational advantage is simple. Instead of recruiting and managing ambassadors across thousands of small merchants one by one, Salmon can plug into a chain that already has steady foot traffic and larger average baskets. That matters most for financed retail categories where purchase intent is high at the moment of checkout.
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• This also fits Salmon's broader model. A product loan acquired in store can later turn into QR spending, a Mastercard linked credit product, and eventually deposits inside the app. Home Credit has the denser store footprint today, but Salmon is trying to turn each retail origination point into a longer lived banking relationship.
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The next phase is likely a shift from merchant count to merchant quality. If Salmon keeps landing chain partners and then layers credit, payments, and deposit products on top, it can grow more like a retailer embedded bank than a standalone POS lender. That would make each new anchor partner worth far more than a simple new storefront.