Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are widely recognized as the backbone of the global economy, yet they remain systematically starved of the capital required to survive. According to the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, the global SME financing gap sits at an astronomical $5.7 trillion.
Nowhere is this friction more acute than in the Philippines. While small businesses make up 99% of all enterprises in the archipelago and generate two-thirds of its employment, the demand for SME credit stands at $221 billion, against a traditional banking supply of just $15 billion.
Jia, a fintech company building a unified financial operating system for emerging market businesses, wants to close that massive $206 billion delta.
The company announced today that it has secured $3 million in seed funding from a syndicate including Coinbase Ventures, Stellar Development Foundation, A100x, TCG, and Hashed Emergent. This injection brings Jia’s total funding to $7.3 million and marks a pivotal moment as the startup expands its proprietary AI-driven lending infrastructure into a full-suite digital banking platform.
Why Traditional Banking Fails SMEs
For decades, traditional commercial banking has failed emerging-market SMEs due to a rigid, collateral-dependent underwriting framework. Without real estate or institutional credit histories to pledge, modern digital entrepreneurs and logistics firms are locked out. Their alternative has historically been informal lenders or predatory loan sharks charging interest rates as high as 1% per day.
“A small business owner in Manila used to have two options for capital,” says Zach Marks, co-founder and CEO of Jia. “Her local bank, which wanted collateral she didn’t have, or a loan shark. The result is a persistent gap that limits these businesses’ ability to sustain operations, support their communities, and grow.”
Jia’s entry strategy focused on dismantling this bottleneck through automated invoice financing. By stepping into the supply chain, Jia allows businesses to convert unpaid receivables into cash in under 24 hours.
The real-world impact of unlocking this liquidity is immediate. “Before Jia, SMEs like ours were pressed in the middle,” explains John Garcia, Commercial Head at Euroline Logistics. “Jia onboarded us in three days at 3% to 4% on 30-day cycles. But the thing that changed how we actually run this business wasn’t the rate. Peace of mind is very expensive, and now we have an option to run to. We started paying suppliers in advance, negotiating better terms, and saying yes to contracts we’d have walked away from before.”
The AI Advantage: Sub-1% Loan Losses in a High-Risk Market
While digital micro-lending has exploded across Southeast Asia, it has historically been plagued by high default rates. Digital lenders often price their loans aggressively to offset non-performing loan (NPL) rates that average between 10% and 15% across the industry.
Jia has completely inverted this dynamic. To date, the company has financed over 15,000 invoices while maintaining a loan loss rate of under 1%.
The secret to this risk mitigation lies in Jia’s proprietary AI underwriting engine. Rather than relying on backward-looking national credit bureaus or physical assets, Jia’s platform ingests granular, real-time invoice and payment data directly from the businesses’ operational workflows. By analyzing transaction velocity, counterparty risk, and historical cash flow patterns via machine learning, Jia can accurately assess creditworthiness and deploy capital within hours, all while operating with institutional-grade security and precision.
With a proven credit model and monthly originations hitting $1 million (growing at 10% month-over-month), Jia is using its new capital injection to evolve from a point-solution lender into a comprehensive financial operating system.
The company is scaling its platform to offer the Philippines’ one million small businesses an all-in-one ecosystem that integrates:
- Working Capital: Instant, automated invoice factoring.
- Business Banking: A no-fee, interest-bearing business account tailored specifically for corporate cash management.
- Cash Flow Infrastructure: Real-time visibility tools and automated reconciliation software that syncs day-to-day cash flows with back-end treasury.
Founding team with Deep Experience in Credit Markets
Jia’s rapid underwriting execution and sophisticated risk controls are a direct reflection of its leadership team’s pedigree. Co-founders Zach Marks and Cheng Cheng spent six years scaling Tala, one of the world’s premier emerging-market fintech pioneers, taking it from 6,000 to over 6 million borrowers across three continents. Marks, who began his career studying informal economies on a Fulbright Fellowship before joining McKinsey, realized that while single-product fintechs solved individual pain points, nobody had built a unified, integrated system for B2B enterprises.
To fund this software-driven banking system, Jia utilizes a highly sophisticated back-end capital infrastructure. While the front-end functions as a seamless, compliant corporate banking app, Jia sources its lending liquidity by connecting local businesses to global private credit funds and institutional investors. By utilizing advanced, blockchain-based liquidity pools supported by partners like Coinbase and Stellar, Jia can route capital globally, bypassing traditional remittance friction and significantly lowering the cost of capital for the end borrower.
“What they’ve built at Jia, combining AI underwriting with efficient global capital rails, is the most credible execution we’ve seen on connecting emerging market businesses to global capital,” says Nisa Amoils, managing partner at A100x Ventures. “That’s the team and the thesis we’ve been waiting to back.”
For Jia, the ultimate goal is creating a frictionless, flat world for enterprise finance. “The global economy,” Marks says, “is finally open for everyone.”
Companies can find more at https://www.jia.xyz/.Â
