For SMEs, a fintech partner can be more than a financing provider

For many small and medium enterprise owners, the value of a financing partner seems straightforward: help close more sales, give customers flexible ways to pay, and create opportunities for growth.

But as businesses become more digital, financing can offer something else that is just as valuable: a clearer view of what is happening inside the business.

Every transaction leaves a signal.

A financing application can indicate customer interest. An approval can provide a picture of purchasing capacity. A completed transaction shows where that interest turned into a sale. Viewed together, these activities can reveal patterns in demand, customer behavior, and sales performance.

That matters because growth is already top of mind. In its 2025 Heart of Hustle report, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), working with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), found that among more than 3,000 MSMEs surveyed, 88% wanted to expand their customer base, yet only 44% believed they had enough market information to support expansion.

Instead of asking only, “How much financing can I offer my customers?” entrepreneurs can ask a more strategic question: “What are these transactions telling me about my business?”

Running an SME means making many decisions with limited time and resources. Which products should I stock more of? When should I run a promotion? What are customers responding to?

Experience and instinct will always matter. But better information can make those instincts more precise.

If certain products consistently attract stronger financing activity and convert into completed purchases, that can help an entrepreneur prioritize inventory or marketing. If customer interest is high but fewer transactions are completed, it may be worth examining product availability, the sales journey, or how payment options are explained.

None of this requires an SME owner to become a data scientist. What matters is having useful information and knowing what business questions to ask.

This is where I believe the role of fintech companies serving SMEs needs to evolve.

A good financing partner helps make a sale possible. A better partner can also help entrepreneurs understand what happened around that sale.

Technology can give merchants greater visibility into financing and transaction activity through tools such as digital merchant dashboards. The same report found that 77% of surveyed MSMEs wanted to increase their use of digital tools, but only 20% said their use of business software had increased from the previous year.

The opportunity is not simply to give SMEs more data. Most entrepreneurs already have more information than they have time to process. The real value is turning that information into something actionable.

The process can be simple: transaction, insight, decision, action, result. Over time, this can lead to better inventory decisions, more targeted promotions, stronger sales execution, and a clearer understanding of what customers want.

Technology, however, should not replace entrepreneurial judgment. SME owners understand their customers, communities, seasonality, and day-to-day realities in ways that a dashboard never will. Technology should complement that knowledge.

For a fintech partner like Skyro, this means looking beyond the financing transaction itself and thinking about how information generated through the partnership can become more useful to merchants.

For SMEs, every peso allocated to inventory, marketing, staffing, or expansion has to work harder. The earlier an entrepreneur can recognize what is working, what is not, and where demand is developing, the better positioned the business is to respond.

The next stage of fintech for SMEs should not be defined only by how much financing can be provided or how quickly a transaction can be approved, but also by how useful the partnership can become to the entrepreneur.

A good fintech partner provides financing. A valuable one helps the entrepreneur understand the business behind the transactions. And a truly strategic partner helps the entrepreneur see opportunities earlier, understand them better, and act with greater confidence. — MICHAEL TABADAY

Michael Tabaday is head of SME at Skyro, a high-growth, digital-first fintech group providing responsible access to finance across emerging markets. He is a seasoned business leader with more than 25 years of experience in sales, marketing, and business development across the financial services and retail sectors.