The global trade finance gap remained at an estimated $2.5 trillion in 2025, unchanged from 2023, according to the Asian Development Bank. UNCTAD estimates that Africa represented about 2.4% of global supply chain finance volume in 2024 despite rapid regional growth. The opportunity is substantial, but adoption depends on enforceable receivables, reliable payment data, capable financial institutions and infrastructure that works in each market.
Quick Answer
Supply chain finance adoption across emerging markets is uneven. Common barriers include weak or inconsistent receivables enforcement, limited product expertise, incomplete credit information, currency and cross-border risk, and fragmented operational infrastructure. Technology can lower onboarding and underwriting costs, but it cannot replace local legal analysis, partner capacity, settlement design and anchor-buyer economics.
The Scale of the Problem: A $2.5 Trillion Gap That Isn’t Closing
ADB’s Global Trade Finance Gap Survey, now in its ninth edition and drawing on responses from more than 110 trade finance providers, found the unmet demand for trade finance held at $2.5 trillion in 2025, representing about 10% of global trade, down slightly from 10.6% in 2023. The gap has grown steadily since ADB first measured it at $1.5 trillion in 2015.
SMEs remain disproportionately affected by unmet trade-finance demand. ADB highlights high compliance costs, limited risk appetite and information constraints among the barriers. Those factors can exclude viable firms, but the survey does not establish that every rejected application represents a sound business or that traditional scoring is the sole cause.
Africa Large Unmet Demand and Structural Barriers
UNCTAD estimates that Africa’s supply chain finance market exceeded $60 billion in 2024, representing about 2.4% of global volume. Its research indicates that only 7% to 25% of estimated demand is currently met, although market conditions and product definitions vary across the 31 countries represented in the underlying datasets.
UNCTAD’s 2025 research on SCF determinants in African markets identifies the barriers as structural rather than a lack of interest. Legal and regulatory frameworks for enforcing receivables financing and payment obligations remain weak or inconsistent across markets. Commercial banks report low awareness of SCF products among target customers and limited in-house expertise to design compliant, client-friendly offerings. Insufficient credit information compounds the problem, since banks pricing SCF products need reliable data on buyer and supplier creditworthiness that many African credit bureaus simply don’t yet provide at scale.
Latin America Market Conditions Vary by Country
Latin America presents a different set of market-by-market conditions. Currency volatility, legal differences, cross-border settlement and the availability of buyer and supplier data can all affect programme economics. Large markets with mature digital-payment infrastructure may support faster adoption than smaller markets, but regional generalisations should be tested against local evidence.
A lender entering Latin America should therefore assess receivables law, FX exposure, tax treatment, payment rails, data access and local servicing capacity separately for each country. Progress in one market does not automatically transfer to neighbouring jurisdictions.
Southeast Asia Strong Corridors and Uneven Access
Asia-Pacific’s large manufacturing corridors support significant SCF activity, but adoption remains uneven across Southeast Asia. Programme viability depends on anchor-buyer concentration, invoice digitisation, legal enforceability, local bank participation and the quality of supplier data rather than regional volume alone.
Digital platforms can use transaction, invoice, logistics and payment data to supplement conventional credit information. These signals may improve assessment and monitoring, but lenders still need consent, data-quality controls, model governance and evidence that alternative variables perform reliably in the target market.
Common Barriers vs Region-Specific Factors
| Barrier | Africa | Latin America | Southeast Asia (ex-manufacturing hubs) |
| Legal enforceability of receivables | Varies by country; enforcement can be inconsistent | Fragmented across national jurisdictions | Variable, improving in some markets |
| Bank product expertise | Limited in-house capacity to structure SCF | Concentrated in a few large regional banks | Uneven outside major financial centers |
| Credit information availability | Credit information can be limited or fragmented | Moderate, but currency risk complicates pricing | Thin outside manufacturing corridors |
| Cross-border complexity | High, though AfCFTA and PAPSS aim to reduce it | High, given fragmented national regulatory regimes | Moderate, depends on trade bloc participation |
| Fintech-led alternative underwriting | Growing in selected markets; validate product-level evidence | Growing in selected markets; validate product-level evidence | Growing unevenly across digital trade and lending platforms |
What’s Actually Working: Regional Integration and Digital Infrastructure
Regional initiatives can reduce parts of cross-border friction, but they do not create one legal and banking regime. In Africa, AfCFTA supports deeper trade integration and PAPSS supports cross-border payment settlement. Lenders still need country-level legal, licensing, FX, tax, collateral and enforcement analysis for an SCF programme.
Fintech-led platforms are doing similar work at the underwriting layer across all three regions, using alternative data, mobile payment histories, e-commerce transaction records, utility payments, to assess SME creditworthiness where formal credit bureau data is thin. This doesn’t replace the need for stronger legal frameworks, but it does let SCF products reach SMEs faster than waiting for regulatory reform alone would allow.
Evaluation Checklist: Assessing SCF Expansion Into a New Emerging Market
- Does the target market have enforceable legal recognition of receivables financing, or does enforcement depend on inconsistent local court practice?
- Is there reliable third-party credit data available for pricing SME risk, or will underwriting need to rely on alternative data sources?
- Does the market participate in a regional payment or trade integration framework that reduces cross-border settlement complexity?
- Is local bank or fintech partner capacity sufficient to structure and service SCF products, or does market entry require building that expertise from scratch?
- Are currency volatility and FX risk material enough to require specific product structuring, particularly in Latin American markets?
- Is demand concentrated in a narrow set of buyer-anchor relationships, or does the market have enough distributed SME activity to justify platform investment?
Bottom Line
The $2.5 trillion trade-finance gap shows the scale of unmet demand, but it is not itself a measure of the addressable SCF opportunity in every country. Lenders should evaluate market entry at corridor and programme level: enforceability, anchor quality, supplier reach, currency, settlement, data and partner capacity determine whether a platform can translate demand into a sustainable portfolio.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
UNCTAD research points to structural barriers rather than lack of demand: weak or inconsistent legal frameworks for enforcing receivables financing, limited in-house bank expertise to structure SCF products, and thin credit information that makes SME risk harder to price accurately.
It’s a different shape of the same underlying issue. Latin America’s constraint centers more on currency volatility and regulatory fragmentation across many distinct national markets, rather than a broad lack of legal infrastructure, with Brazil notably ahead of the regional pattern due to its digital payments and open banking progress.
AfCFTA supports regional trade integration, while PAPSS can reduce payment-settlement friction. They can improve the environment for cross-border programmes, but they do not replace country-specific licensing, receivables law, tax, FX, credit and enforcement analysis.
