InfinitePay Reaches $200 Million Mark in Credit for SMEs, Powered by AI and Open Finance

São Paulo, October 2024 – InfinitePay, CloudWalk's financial services platform for micro and small businesses, has reached the R$1 billion mark in credit granted to entrepreneurs.  The volume represents a 4-fold growth compared to the same period last year, driven by the use of technology, especially Artificial Intelligence, and the adoption of Open Finance by customers.

"We started as a payment terminal in 2019, but in the last two years, we launched smart accounts, cards, sales management systems, online stores, and a series of products that form an ecosystem for micro and small entrepreneurs to take care of their businesses," says Fabricio Costa, CloudWalk's Financial Services Director.

"Credit was a natural path in this trajectory. More than 80% of our customers use two or more InfinitePay products. In a scenario of high credit demand, we were already prepared to grow."

Launched about two years ago, InfinitePay's Smart Credit is an Artificial Intelligence-based system capable of analyzing more than 1,200 parameters to define customer scores. The system can currently evaluate and weigh a series of elements that until recently could be considered subjective, such as social media comments about establishments, as well as checking customer loyalty levels and the purchasing power of those who buy products from a particular business.

This structure allows InfinitePay to make correlations that help find entrepreneurs who are "good payers" but don't always get credit from traditional financial institutions. "Another strategy was to differentiate ourselves from other loan offerings, since the race to offer credit among financial institutions is a game that has lasted for decades. We created a product that combines the best interest rates, instant receipt, and payment flexibility, which are the three factors our customers value most when seeking a loan," says Costa.

Access to resources occurs in seconds, even during weekends. The entrepreneur chooses the maximum payment term and the percentage of sales they want to allocate to loan payment. The system then makes daily charges, respecting the borrower's cash flow. "If they sell more in one day, they pay a little more. If they sell less, they pay less. And if they don't sell that day, they don't pay," says Costa.

"We had customers taking credit at unusual hours, like 4 AM on a Sunday. Instead of blocking it due to fraud risk, our AI made the correct assessment and approved the credit. In the end, it was a market trader who bought merchandise to sell on Sunday morning. That's the advantage of availability and speed of working with technology."

New Possibilities with Open Finance and Buy Now, Pay Later
Two innovations are accelerating InfinitePay's credit offering growth even further. The first is Open Finance, which allows the company to have the same knowledge about their customers' financial habits and behaviors as traditional banks.

If previously it was necessary to have a long-term relationship with micro and small entrepreneurs before making a credit offer, now a new customer can have immediate access to loans. "More than 50,000 customers have already taken credit with us through information obtained through Open Finance.

It's one of the largest volumes in the industry," says Fabrício. "With this, we improved our ability to attract new customers while reducing default risks." Meanwhile, Pix Installments, a solution that combines Pix's practicality with credit card power, is beginning to take its first steps in Brazil and should open up even more possibilities as another option for offering credit.

InfinitePay's idea is to extend its operations through its network to offer this facility to consumers who frequently shop with their merchants. "We see great potential in Pix Installments, as we believe we are in a very privileged position to explore this opportunity.

Monthly, at least 40 million consumers pass through our more than 2.5 million merchants. This means we have a great shortcut, which is our merchants' counter to access this much larger market. Additionally, when we increase these consumers' purchasing power, we bring more sales to our own merchants, thus increasing our main value proposition, which is helping our customer sell more."

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