Working-capital credit decisions for lenders financing Latin American shopkeepers and distributors
Neighbourhood shops in Colombia and Peru buy stock on short supplier credit, yet most have no credit file a bank can read. Lenders who try to serve them phone references and visit stores, so a US$800 loan can cost US$60 to underwrite and take nine days to approve. Good borrowers give up and go back to informal street lenders charging 20% a month.
Sendero reads the data shopkeepers already generate, with their consent: distributor order history, mobile wallet flows and electronic invoices. Its models score repayment risk, propose a limit and tenor, and explain each decision in plain Spanish so credit officers can override it. Lenders call it from their loan origination flow by API and get a decision in under four minutes.
Fintech lenders, cooperatives and consumer-goods distributors offering credit to the roughly 2 million small shops across Colombia, Peru and Mexico, a working-capital need estimated in the tens of billions of dollars.
Platform fee from US$8K a month per lender plus US$1.00–2.50 per credit decision, with volume tiers for distributors running embedded credit programmes.
Juliana OcampoCEO and co-founder
Andrés QuinteroCTO and co-founder
Camila RestrepoHead of Risk
Diego ArangoHead of PartnershipsWe plugged Sendero into our merchant lending flow expecting a long integration, and it took three sprints including the sandbox. The factor breakdown is what sold our credit committee: every decision shows which data moved the limit and where it came from. Our officers now only look at about a quarter of applications.
Juliana and Camila clearly know informal retail credit, and their answers on fraud rings and related-party lending were precise. Net revenue retention above 120% suggests lenders expand once the first programme works. The Spanish-language explanations are a smart touch for credit officers.
In the demo, shops with a connected distributor feed got crisp, well-explained decisions. Shops relying only on wallet data and invoices received noticeably lower limits and more manual reviews, which matters for the Mexico launch where those feeds are thinner. Pricing per decision also adds up fast for small cooperatives.
Reply from Juliana Ocampo, CEO
A wallet-only model for Mexico is in development, and cooperatives under 1,000 decisions a month will get a flat-fee plan.
The distributor partnerships are the interesting part here: order history from beverage and snack distributors is a better signal than anything a bureau has on these shops. Default rates look healthy for the segment. I'd want to see how the models hold up through a full credit cycle before calling it proven.
Reply from Juliana Ocampo, CEO
Our oldest cohorts are now 30 months old, and we publish their performance to partners every quarter; happy to share the latest pack.
Coming soon. Testimonials are invited by the founder and shown separately from open reviews.
Coming soon. Follow Sendero Credit to hear about product and funding updates when this launches.
