Challenges

Needs of SMEs to access to digital financial products and services in a one-stop-shop, having access to alternative lending sources vs. incumbent, expecially in a "credit crunch" environment. Instant lending, invoice discounting, factoring, reverse factoring, digital and international payments, business account and insurances are some of the key products offered on the STEP platform, integrating via APIs the best fintech and insurtech solutions available in the market. STEP also offers to SMEs the ability to aggregate all their current accounts (open banking), with a business financial management tool (digital CFO) helping SMEs to manage efficiently their finances with predictive analytics, artificial intelligence cash flow evaluation, spending control tools etc. All of those offered for free to small and medium enterprises.

Primary target

Which group does your product/service primarily target?

Description of Innovation

The STEP ecosystem is the first fully-fledged digital solution offering all key financial products and services to SMEs, levering state-of-the-art digital integrations with the best fintech and insurtech players.

As McKinsey pointed out in 2019 in its report "Beyond Banking: how banks can use ecosystems to win in the SMEs market", STEP is the ecosystem approach that may be the key to tapping this vast market. Accenture also quantifies in 92bn $ the potential revenues uplift generated by embedded finance solutions for SMEs by 2025.
Fully-fledged financial services ecosystem dedicated to SMEs. Instant lending, invoice discounting, FX, business financial management, insurances with a full digital process

Results

More than 12.000 SMEs customers already use the STEP solution in three different countries, one year and a half after the market go live. The STEP solution is highly scalable and will soon be implemented in Portugal and in other countries, leveraging the existing multi-country platform