Small and medium-sized businesses in Latin America can find it difficult to get the funds they need to export their goods to the United States. It’s a gap Marco Financial is looking to bridge through its tech-enabled risk assessment platform that can provide better insight on who should receive loans. To continue its mission, the Miami-based trade finance company raised $7 million in seed funding and $75 million in a credit facility, led by Arcadia Funds LLC and Kayyak Ventures, to increase its credit line to $100 million. Marco was backed last September by a small seed round from Struck Capital and Antler and over $20 million in a credit facility underwritten by Arcadia Funds. For small and medium businesses in trade, this is important for companies creating a high level of job growth and lowering the poverty rate. By making it easier for businesses to transcend the 30, 60, 90 and now even 120 days they wait to be paid for supplies, we can solve that gap and unlock billions in value so that companies can scale.
Banks don’t like risk, which means businesses spend most of their time trying to get financing rather than increasing sales. Marco’s factoring product enables new companies to get started without having to put up the significant amount of collateral that banks are asking. Banks typically look at financial statements for the past two years of the business and give a line of credit accordingly. Not needing as much collateral also enables more women in Latin America to become business owners because they often don’t have collateral. The new funding will go toward simplifying cross-border payments, assessing risk and productizing ways to take unstructured data, processes and work to create a better experience for the customer. The company also said it aims to give large logistics providers the ability to finance exports on their own.