ADB estimates SME credit gap in Asia at $2.1+ trn
Decentro, India’s leading API banking and financial infrastructure platform, is deepening its presence in Southeast Asia by launching its advanced business credit and underwriting solution in a partnership with Singapore-headquartered DigiAlly.
This initiative brings real-time business financial intelligence to the ASEAN region—an industry-first capability enabling more innovative lending, risk assessment, and cross-border financial operations, Decentro said on 8 April.
As Southeast Asia’s digital economy accelerates, access to credit and intelligent underwriting has become vital for both SMEs and fintechs. The Asian Development Bank estimates the SME credit gap in Asia to be over US$2.1 trillion, with ASEAN nations representing a significant portion of the total. Yet, despite rapid fintech innovation, many financial institutions still rely on outdated verification and underwriting models, exposing them to fraud and slowing credit access.
With 1 in 5 fraud cases now involving synthetic identities (Experian, 2023), the urgency for real-time business intelligence is apparent. Without modern, data-driven infrastructure, institutions risk falling behind—and missing out on the next wave of fintech-led growth.
Building on its robust consumer credit APIs and SaaS infrastructure, Decentro’s expanded stack now includes a comprehensive business credit infrastructure, supporting SME financing, invoice factoring, and cross-border trade.
Through a single integration, fintech platforms and financial institutions across the ASEAN region can now access business financial reports, trade data, and verification insights—all in real time and also via a single, comprehensive PDF report.
Commenting on the milestone, Rohit Taneja, Co-founder & CEO of Decentro, said, “At Decentro, we’ve always believed that the future of fintech is borderless, intelligent, and deeply integrated. Our expansion into Southeast Asia with a strong partner like DigiAlly allows us to power the next generation of business underwriting and credit access—making real-time KYB and financial data accessible at scale. Whether a large unit in Jakarta or a cross-border lender in Manila, the infrastructure to assess risk and unlock growth is now just an API away https://digitalinasia.com/.”
With this move, Decentro introduces a unified business financial intelligence suite—an industry first in the ASEAN region—bringing together financial reports, trade history, and verification data into a single, downloadable PDF. The offering is already enabling:
• Insurance companies to underwrite SME risk faster
• Lenders and banks to assess business creditworthiness more accurately
• Neobanks to verify & offer a credit line on the fly
• Payment service providers (PSPs) to verify businesses across borders with greater confidence
Countries covered for this solution:
• Singapore
• India
• Vietnam
• South Korea
• Australia
• Philippines
• Indonesia
DigiAlly, known for its deep credit and financial data intelligence solutions across Southeast Asia, will be a key data partner in this expansion. Its platform offers granular credit and financial analytics across company types, empowering lenders, PSPs, insurers, and trade platforms with faster, more accurate decision-making. This partnership will enhance Decentro’s product suite to meet the evolving demands of emerging markets and fast-scaling enterprises https://www.nseindia.com/.
“Our collaboration with Decentro brings together the best of infrastructure and intelligence. With our credit and trade data combined with Decentro’s platform-first approach, we’re making real-time, AI-powered business insights available to financial players across Southeast Asia. This is a step forward for financial inclusion, risk transparency, and smart credit enablement,” Shrikant Patil, CEO of DigiAlly, said.
With this expansion, Decentro continues to simplify financial workflows across the globe, helping businesses of all sizes tap into local and international opportunities. The company’s entry into Southeast Asia follows its strong momentum in India, which recorded over 150% year-on-year growth in FY24 – 25. Building on this foundation, Decentro aims to deepen its presence across ASEAN, enable deep credit underwriting for both global and regional platforms, and power the next wave of fintech infrastructure across borders https://www.bseindia.com/.
Founded in 2020, Decentro is a full-stack banking and fintech infrastructure platform that builds and empowers companies across India and Asia. Decentro powers over 1200+ companies, including CRED, MakeMyTrip, Meesho, MoneyTap, AU small finance bank, and many more, helping them with a robust credit & banking infrastructure.
DigiAlly is a Singapore-based fintech pioneering a unique trust-based Embedded Finance platform for fostering “Frictionless Credit”. DigiAlly assesses the overall portfolio of financial institutions across the value chain and assists them in optimising collections through continuous portfolio monitoring. Fiinews.com
