Receivables Financing Is No Longer Experimental. A New FMO Report Confirms It.
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
For years, last-mile distributors and embedded lenders across Africa have faced the same financing problem: they have growing portfolios of customer receivables, proven repayment behaviour, and expanding demand but limited access to the working capital needed to keep scaling. Traditional debt providers are either too expensive, too slow, or too rigid to serve companies at this stage.
Meanwhile, institutional investors are looking for exposure to emerging market credit but can’t find standardised, monitored portfolios at ticket sizes that make sense.
A new landscape study from FMO Ventures and Dalberg Advisors titled Landscape Study on Debt Financing to Tech-enabled Startup and Scale-up Companies in Africa (February 2026) maps this problem in detail and, importantly, identifies receivables refinancing as one of four key debt provider archetypes positioned to close the gap.
Bridgin is named in the report as an example of this model.
The problem the report documents
The FMO study surveyed 57 companies and 21 financiers across ten African markets and conducted over 40 stakeholder interviews. Its core finding is stark: while debt financing to early-stage tech-enabled companies is growing, venture debt now accounts for 38% of venture capital deal value in Africa, up from 25% in 2022. The market remains concentrated in a small number of larger transactions.
Companies with initial financing needs below USD 5 million are the most underserved. Above USD 1 million, only a handful of specialised providers operate. Traditional lenders apply eligibility criteria designed for mature firms. Due diligence processes are lengthy. And most available capital is denominated in hard currency, creating FX risk for companies earning in local currency.
The result is a structural mismatch: capital exists, but it cannot reach the operators who need it most.
Why receivables financing is gaining traction
The report identifies four debt provider archetypes serving this market: high-return debt funds, concessional-return debt funds, banks, and receivables refinancing facilities.
Of these, receivables refinancing is distinctive. Rather than lending to a company and hoping it repays from general cashflows, a receivables facility purchases specific pools of customer receivables at a discount. The originator continues servicing the loans. Customer repayments route to the investor. If the originator fails, back-up servicing mechanisms ensure collections continue.
This structure offers tangible advantages for both sides.
For distributors and embedded lenders, it provides non-dilutive liquidity without repayment schedules. You are not taking on more debt — you are monetising an asset you already have. The capital frees up balance sheet capacity to keep originating.
For investors, it provides granular, data-driven exposure to a diversified pool of receivables, with ongoing monitoring, ring-fenced structures, and automated payment routing. The risk is tied to the underlying portfolio performance, not solely to the originator’s corporate credit.
The FMO report notes that these facilities are moving toward multi-country, multi-originator models — a shift that increases diversification for investors while broadening access for operators across markets.
What makes this model work
The report highlights several features that distinguish receivables refinancing from traditional debt:
Data integration for portfolio assessment. Facilities connect directly to originators’ operational platforms to assess portfolio quality in real time, rather than relying solely on historical financial statements.
Dynamic pricing. Discount rates reflect specific risk factors — default rates, lending tenor, currency risk, hedging costs, cost of capital — rather than applying a one-size-fits-all interest rate.
Back-up servicing. Digital infrastructure enables the facility to continue collecting receivables if the originator faces operational difficulties. This addresses one of the key risks that keeps institutional investors away from smaller portfolios.
Structured disbursement. Typically, the facility pays approximately 80% of the discounted purchase price upfront, with the remaining 20% deferred until the receivable matures. This aligns incentives: the originator benefits from strong portfolio performance.
Where Bridgin fits
Bridgin is Masunga’s financing platform. It was built to operationalise exactly this model, connecting the standardised portfolio data generated by operational platforms (including PaygOps, Masunga’s operations product, as well as third-party systems) to institutional capital through repeatable, ring-fenced structures.
The FMO report names Bridgin alongside Africa Frontier Capital as an example of the emerging multi-country receivables refinancing model. Our pilot in Kenya, where the investor recovered 40% of the purchase value within three months and reached full recovery within a year, demonstrated that the mechanics work when the data infrastructure is in place.
But the real story is not any single transaction. It is the infrastructure layer underneath: the standardisation of portfolio data, the automated payment routing, the monitoring dashboards, and the back-up servicing capability that together make receivables investable at scale.
What needs to happen next
The FMO report is clear that scaling receivables financing and early-stage debt more broadly require more than better products. It requires ecosystem-level changes.
The report’s Solution 1 calls for capitalising and de-risking specialist funds and facilities, including receivables refinancers, through layered structures where junior capital from DFIs, foundations, and catalytic providers crowds in commercial investors, ideally in local currency.
Solution 4 calls for regulatory clarity around off-balance-sheet transactions and securitisation, frameworks that several African markets still lack.
Solution 5 calls for sharing performance data from proven models so that traditional lenders and investors can better understand the risk-return profile of this asset class.
These are not abstract recommendations. They describe the conditions that will determine whether receivables financing remains a niche instrument or becomes a scalable channel for capital deployment across African markets.
The takeaway
The FMO study provides independent, data-backed confirmation of something we have seen firsthand: receivables financing works for early-stage operators and investors when the right infrastructure is in place. The barriers to scale are real and include; FX risk, regulatory uncertainty, limited junior capital, but they are addressable.
Bridgin is a Masunga product
→ Distributors and originators: If you run a receivables portfolio and want to explore non-dilutive liquidity, we'd love to talk. Reach out to learn whether your portfolio is eligible for Bridgin's receivables purchasing programme.
→ Investors and capital providers: If you're looking for standardised, impact-aligned exposure to emerging-market consumer credit, get in touch to learn more about investing in Bridgin pools.
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