An SME can have customers, steady sales and a product people want, yet still struggle to grow because the money needed for the next purchase is not available when it is needed.
This is the problem Pezesha has spent years trying to solve. The Kenya-based fintech has built digital lending infrastructure that connects small and medium-sized businesses with credit and supply-chain finance, while giving banks, financial institutions and other platforms the technology to assess and serve businesses that may not fit traditional lending models.
But Pezesha is no longer positioning itself simply as a digital lending platform. The company has evolved toward becoming a credit infrastructure provider, using alternative data, credit scoring and APIs to help financial institutions make lending decisions.
That shift recently earned the company a place in the World Economic Forum’s 2026 Technology Pioneers cohort, where it was the only African fintech among 100 companies selected from 23 countries. The Forum describes Pezesha as a company connecting micro, small and medium-sized enterprises to credit and supply-chain finance through embedded finance infrastructure.
The problem Pezesha is solving
Access to capital remains one of the biggest constraints for small businesses across Africa.
Traditional financial institutions often have limited information about smaller businesses, particularly those operating outside formal financial systems. Without sufficient transaction history, conventional credit records or other information needed to assess risk, a business can find it difficult to qualify for financing.
Pezesha’s approach is to make the information available to lenders. Instead of requiring every bank, marketplace or business platform to build its own lending technology, Pezesha provides infrastructure that can sit behind those businesses.
The idea is relatively simple: a company that already has a relationship with thousands of merchants can use Pezesha’s technology to assess those merchants and provide access to working capital.
That makes Pezesha less like a conventional lender and more like a layer connecting businesses, data and capital.
The company’s founder and CEO, Hilda Moraa, has described this infrastructure approach as a way to address the fragmentation that makes it difficult for underserved SMEs to access financial services.
From fintech experience to Pezesha
She had already worked in technology, innovation and supply-chain-related roles, including at Coca-Cola, before building her first technology company. According to CGAP, Moraa’s first startup achieved a multi-million-dollar exit in Kenya in 2015. She later founded Pezesha.
Pezesha was founded in the mid-2010s. Some company profiles list 2016, while Pezesha’s own 2022 funding announcement and TechCrunch identify 2017 as the founding year. Rather than treat the conflicting dates as settled, the more important part of the company’s history is what it has built since then.
The original idea was centred on connecting SMEs with working capital.
Over time, that developed into a broader digital financial infrastructure model covering credit scoring, embedded lending and connections between SMEs and financial institutions.
Google’s 2022 profile of Moraa described Pezesha’s infrastructure around three core services: KYC verification, credit scoring and embedded finance.
How Pezesha provides credit
In simple terms, an API allows one software system to communicate with another. Instead of a bank or business platform building an entire lending system from scratch, it can connect its own platform to Pezesha’s infrastructure.
Pezesha’s documentation shows that partners can register borrowers or merchants through its API. The information can include details such as a merchant’s location, identification information, phone number and other data required by the platform.
The partner can then send transaction information to Pezesha.
This is important because transaction history can provide a picture of how a business operates even when conventional credit information is limited.
Pezesha’s data-ingestion API allows partners to upload historical transaction records into its credit-scoring system. Its documentation says at least six months of transaction data should be uploaded for a user to receive a loan offer, while the resulting credit score is used to determine the user’s loan limit.
Once a borrower has been assessed, the system can return a loan limit based on the credit score.
The lending process can then continue through the API, with partners able to submit loan applications and track loan statuses such as processing, funding, funded, paid, cancelled or late.
This is what makes the infrastructure model interesting.
Pezesha is not simply asking a small business owner to leave the platform where they already operate and apply for a separate loan. The financing can be built into the existing business relationship.
Lending through existing business platforms
Imagine a wholesale platform that serves thousands of small retailers. The platform already knows what those retailers buy, how frequently they order and, potentially, how much they sell.
Instead of sending those retailers elsewhere when they need financing, the platform can integrate Pezesha’s lending infrastructure and offer credit within its existing service.
Pezesha’s 2022 funding announcement said companies including Twiga Foods, Jumia and MarketForce had integrated its APIs to provide credit to merchant networks. TechCrunch also reported that Pezesha was working with more than 20 partner companies at the time, including Twiga and MarketForce.
The model gives the partner another financial service to offer its customers while giving Pezesha access to business data and distribution channels.
It also changes where lending happens.
Credit does not necessarily have to begin with a bank application. It can begin with a purchase, an order, a supply relationship or another existing business transaction.
That is particularly relevant for African SMEs, where digital marketplaces and supply-chain platforms increasingly hold useful information about how businesses operate.
Turning transaction data into credit decisions
Data is at the centre of Pezesha’s lending infrastructure.Its current API documentation shows how transaction data can feed into its credit-scoring process. The company can use information supplied by partner platforms to assess a merchant and determine whether that merchant qualifies for a particular loan limit.
The company now describes this technology through its Patascore platform.
According to Moraa’s recent public statements, Pezesha has evolved into an AI-driven SME infrastructure company, with Patascore using alternative data, credit scoring and underwriting APIs to support financial institutions and other ecosystem partners.
This is a significant change in positioning.
The value is no longer only in distributing loans. It is in providing the infrastructure that allows other financial institutions to make better lending decisions.
That could become increasingly important as African financial institutions look for ways to serve businesses that traditional credit systems do not adequately capture.
A marketplace connecting businesses and capital
Its earlier model brought SMEs seeking working capital together with banks, microfinance institutions and other financial providers. The company’s own description of its platform also included financial education and credit-scoring services.
That marketplace approach gives Pezesha another role in the lending ecosystem.
It does not necessarily have to be the institution providing every unit of capital. Instead, it can provide the technology and trust infrastructure that allows different sources of capital to reach SMEs.
Its 2022 funding announcement also highlighted partnerships designed to increase debt liquidity for onward lending, including a relationship with IOG, the company behind Cardano. Pezesha said at the time that it was exploring DeFi liquidity channels alongside its lending infrastructure.
That part of the company’s history is notable because it shows that Pezesha’s infrastructure has, at different points, been designed to connect traditional financial institutions with newer sources of capital.
The $11 million funding round
In August 2022, the company announced an $11 million pre-Series A round consisting of $6 million in equity and $5 million in debt. The round was led by Women’s World Banking Capital Partners II. Other participating investors included Verdant Frontiers Fintech Fund, cFund, IOG, Talanton and Verdant Capital Specialist Funds.
The funding was intended to help Pezesha expand its embedded finance infrastructure, strengthen its presence in East Africa and enter more markets in Sub-Saharan Africa.
At the time, Pezesha said it had disbursed more than 100,000 loans to SMEs across Kenya, Uganda and Ghana over the preceding two years.
The funding also reflected investor interest in a different way of approaching SME finance.
Rather than building another consumer-facing loan product, Pezesha was trying to become part of the infrastructure behind lending.
Pezesha’s place in Africa’s fintech market
Pezesha’s story reflects a broader shift in African fintech.
The first wave of fintech companies often focused on giving consumers new ways to pay, save, borrow or transfer money.
The next layer is increasingly about infrastructure.
Companies are building the systems that allow banks, marketplaces, merchants and other businesses to provide financial services without having to develop every component themselves.
Pezesha sits within that infrastructure layer.
Its focus on SMEs is particularly important because small businesses form a huge part of African economies but are often difficult for traditional financial institutions to assess efficiently.
If Pezesha can make business data more useful to lenders, it could help close part of that information gap.
That does not mean technology alone will solve Africa’s SME financing problem. But better information can make it easier for financial institutions to understand borrowers, price risk and extend credit where appropriate.
What comes next for Pezesha
Pezesha’s recent recognition by the World Economic Forum suggests that its ambitions have moved beyond being a regional digital lender.
In June 2026, the World Economic Forum selected Pezesha as one of its 100 Technology Pioneers. The company was the only African fintech in the cohort, which includes startups working across AI, energy, space, robotics and other emerging technologies. The Forum specifically described Pezesha’s work as connecting MSMEs to credit and supply-chain finance through embedded finance infrastructure.
Moraa has also described the company’s current direction as an evolution toward AI-driven credit infrastructure, with Patascore providing alternative data, scoring and underwriting capabilities to financial institutions and other partners.
That points to a different future for Pezesha.
The company does not necessarily need to become the biggest lender to African SMEs. Its larger opportunity may be to become one of the systems that other lenders depend on to understand and finance them.
For African SMEs, the distinction matters.
Access to capital is only one part of the problem. The infrastructure used to determine who gets credit, how much they receive and how that credit fits into their existing business activity can be just as important.
Pezesha is betting that building that infrastructure can create a more scalable business than lending alone.
And after nearly a decade of building around SME credit, the company is now trying to prove that the next stage of African fintech growth may be less about creating another financial product and more about building the rails that allow many financial products to work better.