How We Built the Financial Decisioning Layer Behind a Leading North American Vehicle Marketplace

• Thousands — of dealerships across North America on the platform
• Millions — of car shoppers served with personalized financing offers
• 40+ — banks and lenders integrated into a single pre-qualification engine
• 60 seconds — to generate a real credit offer tied to a specific vehicle
• 15–20% — increase in direct sales reported after platform launch
• Stack — Node.js, React, GraphQL, Next.js

The platform is a dealer aggregator marketplace — a single destination where shoppers can browse inventory from thousands of dealerships, filter by body type, price range, and location, and see which vehicles they can actually afford based on their real financial profile.

What makes it different from a standard inventory search is what happens after pre-qualification. Every vehicle in the results is priced specifically for that user — with their monthly payment displayed prominently, calculated against their credit profile, their down payment, and their selected loan term.

Shoppers can adjust those parameters on any vehicle page and watch the financing update in real time: change the term, recalculate the APR; add a trade-in, see the new monthly payment; move a vehicle outside budget, view payment option scenarios that bring it back within reach.

The Kelly Blue Book integration shows each vehicle’s position relative to fair market range, giving shoppers the context to evaluate whether a deal is worth pursuing.

When they’re ready, the platform connects them to the dealer through an appointment booking flow — arriving informed, pre-qualified, and with a specific vehicle in mind.

The user-facing experience feels simple. The engineering underneath it is not.

Generating a real, fundable financing offer in under 60 seconds requires pulling together credit bureau data, lender-specific rate tables, vehicle-specific eligibility rules, state and local tax calculations, dealer fees, and DMS platform data — simultaneously, across 40+ banking and lending partners, each with their own APIs, data formats, and decisioning logic.

The work required building normalization layers across heterogeneous data structures and designing a system capable of handling the full complexity of automotive financing — co-applicants, trade-in valuation, multi-term scenarios, out-of-area lead capture, and dealership workflows — while remaining fast enough for a real-time consumer experience.

Every integration introduced its own business rules, data models, and technical constraints. The challenge was creating a consistent experience without requiring customers or dealers to understand the complexity operating behind the scenes

Customers see a monthly payment. Dealers see a financeable deal. Underneath both sits a decisioning engine that brings together lenders, taxes, rebates, trade-ins, F&I products, and dealership systems into a single workflow—one that can move directly into dealership operations without manual re-entry or duplicate data handling.

Our role centered on building that critical layer, ensuring every offer was accurate, explainable, and immediately actionable inside the dealership environment.

The challenge wasn't making dozens of systems identical. It was orchestrating them well enough that shoppers experienced a seamless buying journey while dealerships received complete, financeable deals.

“Every integration had its own rules, formats, and constraints. Our job was to absorb that complexity in the architecture so customers could experience a single, seamless financing journey.”

— Bohdan Bilas, CTO, HebronSoft

Pre-Qualification Engine

• Real-time credit assessment without hard inquiry — no credit score impact for the shopper
• Co-applicant support — combined credit and income evaluation to improve qualification odds
• General pre-qualification submitted to lender network, not tied to a specific vehicle until selection
• ZIP-code validation with out-of-area lead capture — email collection for future service expansion

Personalized Vehicle Marketplace

• Dealer aggregator inventory across thousands of dealerships, filterable by body type, location, and budget
• Personalized monthly payment displayed per vehicle based on individual credit profile
• Kelly Blue Book integration showing fair market range for each vehicle
• Sort by methods restricted to pre-qualified users — only vehicles within the shopper’s actual budget visible
• Recommended vehicles surface similar inventory based on shopper’s selection

Real-Time Financing Calculator

• Down payment adjustment: real-time recalculation of eligible vehicles and monthly payment
• Term selection: multiple loan term scenarios showing payment impact across options
• Trade-in calculator: vehicle market value minus outstanding balance, triggering new APR and monthly payment
• Payment options view: scenarios for out-of-budget vehicles showing which term brings it within reach
• Calculations powered by real lender programs, taxes, fees, rebates, and vehicle-specific financing rules rather than generic estimates.

Lender & System Integrations

• 40+ lenders and automotive ecosystem integrations, including Dealertrack, RouteOne, Equifax, Vertex, Kelly Blue Book, Black Book, F&I Express, and major dealership management systems such as CDK and Reynolds & Reynolds.
• Credit bureau integrations for real-time pre-qualification
• State and local tax engines for jurisdiction-accurate payment calculations
• Dealer Management System (DMS) integrations for live inventory and pricing
• Dealer View All Inventory — per-dealer inventory search within the marketplace
• Appointment booking flow connecting qualified shopper to dealer — primary conversion point

The platform shifted the car buying conversation. Shoppers arrive at dealerships pre-qualified, with a specific vehicle in mind and a financing offer already validated against their credit profile. Dealers receive leads that are further along in the purchase decision than traditional inquiry forms produce.

• 15–20% — Increase in direct sales reported after platform launch
• 60 seconds — To generate a real, financeable credit offer tied to a specific vehicle
• 40+ — Banks and lenders integrated into a single pre-qualification engine
• Thousands — of dealerships across North America on the platform
• Millions — of shoppers served with personalized vehicle financing offers

Every interaction that looks like a UX decision — changing a down payment, comparing loan terms, viewing payment options, or filtering vehicles by budget — is deeply connected to financial logic.

The customer experience and the deal-math engine could not be designed independently. They had to evolve together so that every number shown online remained accurate, explainable, and actionable inside the dealership.

What customers see as a simple monthly payment is the result of dozens of connected systems working together behind the scenes — and that complexity only creates value when it becomes invisible.