Drip Capital, a cross-border trade finance provider, has signed a US$40mn committed credit facility with East West Bancorp, as it seeks to expand trade finance solutions out to small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The fintech company offers buyer financing solutions – supply chain finance and inventory finance –to SME importers in the US. Meanwhile, in developing markets including India and Mexico, the company offers invoice discounting. Since its inception in 2016, Drip has financed over US$1.2bn of trade for over 1,500 sellers and buyers spread across more than 80 countries.

“We are seeing a lot of interest from banks,” Pushkar Mukewar, co-founder and CEO at Drip Capital tells GTR. “Many of these banks can’t directly provide supply chain finance to SMEs because they tend to involve small ticket transactions and so it is simply not worth it for the banks to have their manual practices focus on the segment. Increasingly, they are looking for platforms like ours to get access to this market.” He adds that the asset-based facility from East West will be used to ramp up the number of sellers and buyers on Drip Capital’s platform.

“Drip is growing at a rapid pace and institutional partnerships are a cornerstone of our capital markets strategy. The partnership with East West represents a significant milestone for our company. It will further accelerate our ability to provide fast and seamless financing to global exporters and importers. We are excited to scale up our operations to service many more customers,” he says.

This is the latest in a string of partnerships between banks and fintech supply chain finance platforms.

Last year, JP Morgan partnered with working capital technology company Taulia to roll out supply chain finance beyond tier one suppliers. Meanwhile, fintech firm Demica, another supply chain finance platform, has linked up with ING, Lloyds, BBVA and HSBC to do a similar thing.

Drip Capital now plans to further expand its customer base with launches in Bangladesh, Ecuador and the UAE.