The world has never been richer in liquidity — yet access to it remains deeply uneven. While cross-border payment systems move more than $1 quadrillion annually, small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) still face barriers that keep them cut off from international funding.
Despite the rise of digital payments, traditional finance remains fragmented. A banking infrastructure was built for a domestic era, where each jurisdiction operates within single regulation and currency restrictions. As a result, global transactions often pass through multiple intermediaries, making instant liquidity slow and costly.
For entrepreneurs and SMEs, it means months of verification and paperwork, as well as high banking fees when securing funding. Investors, in their turn, face limited lending opportunities, struggling to unlock profitable SME projects beyond their jurisdiction. Eventually, finance remains stubbornly local.
The Cost of Fragmentation
Despite abundant liquidity, there is a growing imbalance across regions in terms of cross-border investments. According to the UN Trade and Development data (UNCTAD), high borrowing costs and currency volatility still discourage long-term infrastructure investment. For example, in 2024, European countries experienced a 58% decrease compared to the previous year. The sharpest declines were recorded in Germany (-89%), Spain (-39%), and Italy (-24%). At the same time, North America showed a 23% increase, while Africa saw the leading inflows, +75%.
Besides increased costs and volatility, siloed regulation complicates cross-border lending. Each country maintains its own frameworks for licensing, disclosure, and investor protection. While large enterprises can afford the cost of compliance to access foreign capital, SMEs struggle to compete for cross-border lenders. As a result, some regions find themselves in the so-called funding desert, and investors have limited portfolio diversification opportunities.
Borderless Lending Solutions As Enablers of Economic Growth
Cross-border lending is no longer limited to traditional banking infrastructures. Technology-driven platforms that employ digital blockchain-based finance foster collaboration between global investors and local small businesses. Enhanced access to liquidity is possible due to several factors:
- •Smart contracts and tokenization ensure transparency, instant settlement, and enforceable agreements. Since real-world assets are tokenized, lenders can easily understand their share of the fractional ownership. What is more, smart contracts make every transaction transparent, allowing investors to monitor repayments without intermediaries easily.
- •Integrated compliance tools streamline the lending process while maintaining full security and regulatory integrity. The KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) frameworks help verify identities, reducing the risk of scams on both sides. At the same time, jurisdictional mapping allows businesses and investors to operate within legal jurisdictions with ease, while the platform matches compliance standards to each jurisdiction.
- •Stablecoins and on-chain payments mitigate currency and transfer risks, addressing major cross-border lending barriers. They enable almost instant payments with fixed, affordable fees that remain even if the sum changes. Since all the transactions are on-chain, the payment details are transparent to any party. Moreover, stablecoins by nature aren’t subject to increased volatility like currency pairs. This allows borrowers and lenders to easily convert digital coins into traditional fiat currencies like EUR and USD without losses due to exchange rates.
These advantages are likely to contribute to the wide adoption of technology-driven fintech lending. According to Coinlaw, cross-border lending now represents about 17% of total lending volume, fueled by growing demand from underserved regions seeking access to global capital. At the same time, by 2025, blockchain-based platforms account for nearly 20% of the market, benefiting from pro-regulatory momentum that strengthens compliance and transparency.
Beyond enabling global liquidity, technology also helps cut costs. Coinlaw data shows that blockchain, automation, and AI have reduced operational expenses by up to 20%. This allows crypto crowdlending platforms to offer increased profitability for investors — up to 25% — while maintaining strong risk controls. Besides following mandates like transparency driven by smart contracts and tokenization, the platform operates within an institutional-grade compliance framework — including KYC/AML checks, legal structuring, and independent third-party audits. What’s more, the loans are secured by real-world collateral to add another level of capital protection for investors.
By bridging traditional capital with Web3 infrastructure, blockchain-based crowdlending solutions cut transaction costs and eliminate months of paperwork, accelerating funding and fostering global finance. For SMEs, this opens a new liquidity channel that drives real economic impact — from job creation to local innovation. For example, a Kenyan supplier of agricultural equipment — primarily focused on coffee processing but also serving producers of fruits, vegetables, vanilla, and edible seaweed — is seeking €400,000 in external financing to meet working capital needs for major contracts. On a crypto crowdlending platform, the company aims to raise between 12,500 and 25,000 USDC. Another Kenyan enterprise, a mango wholesaler, seeks 30,000 USDC to expand its operations and launch a fully automated production line. Crypto crowdlending allows both African companies to easily access global liquidity and attract external funding to power their businesses.
The Real Value of Liquidity Without Borders
Cross-border lending for SMEs provides several benefits. Firstly, entrepreneurs face less credit burden; hence, improving their performance and resilience of local economies. According to recent World Bank data, financial access remains key to economic growth for small businesses. As of March 2025, the financial gap across emerging and developing economies reaches $5.7 trillion or almost 20% of total private sector credit. Crypto crowdlending platforms mitigate the complexities of traditional banking, allowing investors to securely lend capital to entrepreneurs regardless of their jurisdiction.
Traditional financial institutions also recognize the impact of technology and borderless liquidity. In response, they are developing their own blockchain-based solutions, such as UBS Digital Cash pilot for cross-border payments from Swiss bank UBS and BNY Mellon’s tokenized deposits initiative in the US. This way, they attempt to modernize fragmented finance and follow consumer trends in the highly competitive financial industry. However, such projects still remain siloed and focused on cross-border payment transactions rather than investment and lending.
Summing up
Small and medium-sized enterprises have become the backbone of the global crowdlending market, representing more than 60% of total borrowers in 2025. SMEs majorly rely on alternative funding because traditional financial sources, including private credits from local and foreign investors, are almost inaccessible. Strict regulation, lengthy compliance, and high fees prevent entrepreneurs from getting external capital.
Cross-border crowdlending powered by blockchain and stablecoins allows both SMEs and investors to overcome traditional barriers. For borrowers, it’s a facilitated access to finance across the globe, while for lenders, it’s a diversification opportunity with increased profitability and transparency. As a result, decentralized platforms are transforming from niche fintech experiments into global liquidity networks that connect investors directly with productive businesses worldwide.