Geisha Kow­lessar-Alon­zo

Se­nior mul­ti­me­dia re­porter

Re­port­ing from Mi­a­mi

Small and mi­cro en­ter­pris­es (SMEs) are vi­tal dri­vers of eco­nom­ic progress but de­spite their im­por­tance, many in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean re­main heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on cash.

This high­lights a sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ty to digi­tise their op­er­a­tions and sup­ply chains, says Wal­ter Pi­men­ta, ex­ec­u­tive vice-pres­i­dent, com­mer­cial and new pay­ment flows, Mas­ter­card Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue of how to scale digi­ti­sa­tion to dri­ve in­no­va­tion in SMEs, Pi­men­ta ex­plained that ac­cess to cap­i­tal is the biggest stum­bling block to growth. He said some SMEs strug­gle to get the fi­nanc­ing they need to ex­pand their busi­ness and to meet op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es.

Pi­men­ta was speak­ing dur­ing a round­table dis­cus­sion on the sec­ond day of Mas­ter­card's 2024 In­no­va­tion Fo­rum at the Fontainebleau Ho­tel in Mi­a­mi.

He fur­ther not­ed that SMEs re­quire sup­port with their cash­flow; man­ag­ing pay­ments, fore­cast­ing, ac­count­ing, and con­trol­ling their spend, stat­ing that many of these busi­ness­es still re­ly on slow or risky cash and bank trans­fers and of­ten use per­son­al pay­ment so­lu­tions rather than more ap­pro­pri­ate busi­ness pay­ment meth­ods.

Pi­men­ta al­so said that SMEs need so­lu­tions to im­prove their op­er­at­ing ef­fi­cien­cy and seek dig­i­tal, in­te­grat­ed, and tai­lored tools to help them build and grow their busi­ness­es.

On how is Mas­ter­card dri­ving in­no­va­tion to sup­port SMEs, Pi­men­ta ex­plained the multi­na­tion­al pay­ments com­pa­ny is lever­ag­ing in­no­va­tions like API in­ter­faces that en­able com­pa­nies to em­bed vir­tu­al card pay­ments in­to their process­es and sys­tems smooth­ly. This con­ve­nience helps busi­ness­es sim­pli­fy their op­er­a­tions and im­prove their pay­ment sys­tems.

"At Mas­ter­card, we are ad­dress­ing these chal­lenges by pro­vid­ing in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions through our Mas­ter­card Move Com­mer­cial Pay­ments Pro­gramme, which em­pow­ers fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and fin­techs to take con­trol of the en­tire pay­ment process. This not on­ly im­proves the over­all pay­ment ex­pe­ri­ence but al­so cre­ates a more prof­itable and scal­able so­lu­tion for busi­ness­es," he added.

This year marks the 13th edi­tion of the Mas­ter­card Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean 2024 In­no­va­tion Fo­rum, the com­pa­ny’s an­nu­al flag­ship event.

The two-day event brings to­geth­er pay­ment in­dus­try ex­perts, cus­tomers, banks, mer­chants, fin­techs, ex­changes, Mas­ter­card ex­ec­u­tives to share ideas and their vi­sion for the fu­ture of com­merce.