US-headquartered export finance provider Marco Financial secured $82m on Tuesday in a seed round featuring freight forwarder Flexport’s corporate venturing unit, Flexport Ventures.
The round consists of $7m in equity funding and a $75m credit facility co-led by Kayyak Ventures and Arcadia Funds that expanded the company’s credit line to $100m, according to TechCrunch.
Village Global, Tresalia Capital, 342 Capital, Struck Capital, Antler and Antler Elevate, Florida Funders, Fox Ventures and angel investors including Phil Bentley and Naman Budhdeo filled out the list of participants in either the debt or equity portion of the round.
Marco has built an online platform which supplies financing to support the export businesses of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Latin America. The capital will fund product development and the expansion of its supply chain, purchase order and inventory financing capacity.
The startup had previously raised $26m in September 2020 across an equity round co-led by Struck Capital and Antler, and a credit facility underwritten by Arcadia Funds.
Peter D. Spradling, Marco’s co-founder and chief operating officer, said: “Small exporters, especially in LatAm, are burdened with a broken financing system that makes it nearly impossible to compete with larger exporters.
“Banks aren’t built to serve the needs of smaller companies; they often make SMEs wait around 90 days before rejecting over 50% of trade finance applications. We built Marco specifically to support this disadvantaged market. The seed round will help build a more stable and equitable trade ecosystem.”
