Marco, the first tech-enabled trade financing platform built for small and medium-sized businesses in the United States and Latin America, announced a partnership with CARGOES Finance By DP World, a platform that enables rapid and seamless access to working capital for emerging-market small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). As an approved lender for CARGOES Finance, Marco enables SMEs within CARGOES Finance by DP World to access the financing they require to grow and ultimately help close the growing $1.7 trillion global trade finance gap that prevents small exporters from competing in global markets.
DP World is one of the largest logistics companies in the world, operating 90 terminals — including 12 in Central and South America — across six continents that handled over 10% of global container trade in 2021. In July, DP World announced CARGOES Finance, a fintech platform that offers trade, logistics and inventory financing solutions to SMEs. This growing group of exporters handles 50% of global trade and accounts for 60% of total employment in advanced economies (80% in developing countries) but often lacks the capital and resources needed to drive global expansion. Payment cycles for SME exporters can last an excruciating two to four months. Banks, traditionally the primary trade finance providers, reject 50% of SME financing applicants and largely retreated from SME trade lending in the tighter regulatory climate following the 2008 financial crisis.
“DP World’s global footprint and tremendous cargo volume opens exciting new opportunities for Marco to help close the trade finance gap that is disproportionately impacting small exporters and stymieing their access to the global economy,” said Jacob Shoihet, CEO and co-founder of Marco. “As an authorized lender on the CARGOES Finance platform, we have embedded MarcoScan, our new document recognition and analytics tool, into one of the world’s largest logistics providers, allowing us to scale and support more SMEs in need of the working capital they typically cannot access. This partnership with DP World represents a major step in Marco’s growth toward an embedded finance model that reimagines a more equitable and democratic trade finance ecosystem for the 21st century.”
Marco’s artificial intelligence (AI) trade finance platform is designed specifically for the needs of SMEs in emerging markets. Marco leverages AI to eliminate traditional manual processes and serve clients across the trade ecosystem with rapid access to working capital, enabling SMEs to grow businesses and investors to access a trade finance asset class. Marco recently enhanced its trade finance platform with the introduction of MarcoScan, a document recognition and analytics tool that allows seamless collaboration across the entire value chain, helping drive efficiencies, increase revenues and lower risks for SME exporters. Using AI to enable advanced document understanding at scale, MarcoScan addresses the root cause of trade finance inefficiencies — paper — and extracts information from both structured and unstructured documents, a process fundamental to the embedded finance market.
“Continuing our journey to bridge the global trade finance gap, we have partnered with Marco to accelerate the progress made so far,” said Sinan Ozcan, Senior Executive Officer, DP World Financial Services Limited. “With a strong presence in the US and Latin America, Marco enhances our coverage to geographies that have a huge underserved SME base and access to credit has been a key challenge that remains unsolved.”
Backed by a $7M equity seed round led by Arcadia Funds LLC and Kayyak Ventures, Marco —which is based in Miami and has offices in New York and Montevideo, Uruguay — offers factoring, asset-based lending, purchase order financing, supply chain financing and other forms of non-dilutive capital through a team of experts with over a century of collective experience in helping SMEs grow.
