Weekly Newsletter – September 28, 2025 -

As of September 28, 2025, the financial landscape for emerging technologies and sustainable infrastructure continues to evolve rapidly. Today’s newsletter examines three interconnected themes reshaping capital flows: closing the SME financing gap, the acceleration of AI-fintech partnerships, and innovative funding models for community energy resilience. Each area represents both immediate opportunity and structural shifts in how capital is accessed, deployed, and managed across global markets.

Scaling SME Finance: Priorities for the Next Wave of Scale

The challenge
The trade and supply-chain finance gap is acute: IFC estimates the global trade-finance gap rose to about $2.5 trillion between 2017 and 2025, with SMEs in emerging markets most affected — constraining working capital and growth opportunities. Source

Where immediate scale can come from
– Supply-chain finance (SCF): IFC and other DFIs see SCF as a high-leverage solution that can free working capital across supplier networks; IFC has expanded its Global Supply Chain Finance Program (previously $1bn) to support scaling opportunities and to mobilise confirming banks and partners. Source Program page
– Credit mix and product fit: For scaling businesses, conventional bank loans/RCFs remain the cheapest when cashflows support them; asset-based lending, invoice finance and venture/private credit fill distinct gaps for working capital, growth capex and M&A — choose instruments by job, size and tenor. Source
– Technology and underwriting: AI and advanced analytics are already speeding approvals and expanding credit to firms with thin histories — at scale they can materially close funding shortfalls. Source
– Sustainability-linked supply: Aligning SME financing with green reporting and technical support unlocks new pools of capital and is a focus of OECD’s SMEs-for-sustainability platform. Source

Five practical moves for stakeholders
1. Banks & fintechs — deploy buyer-led SCF programs tied to large corporate credit ratings; integrate invoice finance and ABL to convert receivables into scalable liquidity. Source Source
2. DFIs & governments — provide first-loss guarantees and platform facilitation to reduce counterparty/KYC friction and mobilise global confirming banks. Source
3. Corporates — standardise supplier onboarding and reporting to make suppliers “finance-ready” for SCF and green credit lines. Source Source
4. Investors & private credit — allocate targeted capital to asset-backed and unitranche structures that meet SME capex and acquisition financing needs. Source
5. Lenders — accelerate AI/analytics adoption for underwriting and monitoring to lower unit costs and responsibly expand credit coverage. Source

Fintech + AI: Partnerships, Data and Where Payments Will Go Next

What’s new: Big fintech players are accelerating AI-driven expansion through strategic partnerships and product bundling. Example: PayPal is offering PayPal/Venmo users a free 12-month Perplexity Pro subscription plus early access to Perplexity’s Comet browser — embedding AI search/browsing into payment flows. Source

Why it matters commercially: Partnerships like PayPal–Perplexity and recent bank hyperscaler/AI deals (CommBank–OpenAI, Santander–OpenAI, Standard Chartered–Alibaba, Wells Fargo–Google Cloud) show two priorities: (1) accelerate customer-facing AI features and (2) scale internal productivity and risk functions. These alliances shorten time-to-market and provide immediate reach to large user bases. Source

Data and budgets: Institutional appetite for non-traditional datasets is booming — nearly 89% of alternative-data buyers expect budgets to increase or stay flat, and AI adoption among data buyers has roughly doubled year-on-year. Firms are subscribing to many datasets (average ~19) and using AI both to improve internal efficiency (66%) and to deploy chatbots (49%). Source

Operational impact: AI is already central to fraud detection, credit decisioning and customer experience. Real-time anomaly detection and agentic AI are becoming standard as payment rails shift to instant settlement — compressing fraud windows to milliseconds and making pre-emptive AI detection essential. Source

Market scale and expectations: Market research projects the global AI-in-fintech market could reach roughly USD 76.2 billion by 2033, underscoring sizable long-term upside for firms that combine AI, payments and data services. Source

Risks and constraints: Rapid rollouts raise privacy, data governance and regulatory scrutiny concerns. Observers note potential issues around model explainability, data sharing between payment and AI partners, and consumer trust. Source Source

Strategic takeaways for executives:
1) Treat partnerships as distribution and data-access levers — but negotiate clear data governance, consent and liability terms up front. Source
2) Invest in explainable models and synthetic training data to accelerate safe deployments while protecting PII. Source
3) Monetize AI value beyond features — package datasets, APIs and agentic services for enterprise customers as alternative-data budgets grow. Source
4) Engage regulators early and run staged pilots to manage trust and compliance risk. Source

Financing Community Microgrids — Programs, Pathways, and Practical Steps

Community microgrids are moving from pilot projects to bankable infrastructure through a mix of public programs, private capital pools, and commercial contracting models. Key points finance teams should know:

– Government technical assistance and accessible grants: The U.S. Department of Energy’s Community Microgrid Assistance Partnership (C-MAP) provides funding and wraparound technical services to help electrically isolated communities and Tribes plan, improve, or expand microgrids. C-MAP also hosts an open knowledge forum (C-MIX) so non-awardees can access lessons learned and tools for project development. DOE C-MAP factsheet C-MAP program

– Aggregated private capital and coordinated industry consortia: Industry-led coalitions are packaging technology, delivery partners, and finance to accelerate deployments. Schneider Electric’s Accelerating Resilient Infrastructure Initiative (with partners including Microsoft, AlphaStruxure, and others) has signaled roughly $7.5 billion of deployable capital to back community DER and microgrid projects. Latitude Media Microgrid Knowledge

– Typical commercial structures to remove upfront cost barriers: Common approaches include energy-as-a-service (developer finances and owns assets; customer pays a recurring fee), energy savings performance contracts, and full DBOOM (design-build-own-operate-maintain) arrangements. These models let public entities and small communities access resilience upgrades while shifting capital and performance risk to experienced providers. Latitude Media Microgrid Knowledge

– Revenue-stacking and new market value streams: Emerging technical and market approaches—peer-to-peer trading, aggregated grid services, and local retail/wholesale participation—can improve project economics by creating additional revenue streams and fairness in pricing between participants. ScienceDirect

Action checklist for finance and procurement teams:
1. Engage DOE C-MAP / C-MIX for planning support and grant eligibility. Source Source
2. Evaluate consortia capital options and partner lists (Schneider initiative). Source Source
3. Model multiple contracting structures (EaaS, ESPC, DBOOM) including revenue stacking and P2P value streams. Source Source
4. Time eligibility for tax credits/incentives into your project schedule — industry initiatives are explicitly accelerating planning to lock in incentives. Source

Sources

The common thread across these three financing domains is clear: the integration of new technologies, collaborative structures, and innovative funding mechanisms is creating more accessible capital pathways where traditional systems have fallen short. Whether addressing the $2.5 trillion SME financing gap, deploying AI to transform financial services, or mobilizing capital for distributed energy resilience, success increasingly depends on blending public and private resources, leveraging data and analytics for better risk assessment, and creating standardized but flexible funding structures. As we head into Q4 2025, organizations that can navigate these new financing ecosystems—simultaneously addressing sustainability metrics, technology integration, and risk transparency—will be best positioned to access the substantial capital pools now being directed toward next-generation infrastructure and services.