Jia Secures $3M from Coinbase, Stellar, and A100x to Give Southeast Asia’s Small Businesses Financial Stack They’ve Always Been Denied

Jia, the financial operating system for small businesses in emerging markets, today announced $3 million in seed funding from Coinbase Ventures, Stellar Development Foundation and A100x, and follow-on investments from TCG and Hashed Emergent. The raise brings Jia’s total funding to $7.3 million.

Jia gives small businesses in the Philippines access to working capital, business banking, and cash flow tools in one place. Powered by Ossicone, Jia’s proprietary AI credit model built on Southeast Asian SME data, businesses can turn unpaid invoices into cash in under 24 hours — without the collateral requirements or weeks-long approval processes that leave most small businesses empty-handed.

To date, Jia has financed over 15,000 invoices for small businesses across the Philippines, reached $1 million in monthly originations growing 10% month-over-month, and maintained loan loss rates far below industry average.

With this round, Jia is expanding beyond invoice financing into a full financial platform for the more than one million small businesses in the Philippines. Alongside working capital, Jia now offers a no-fee, interest-bearing business account with automated reconciliation, invoice tracking, and real-time cash flow visibility, giving business owners a single place to manage both capital and day-to-day finances.

Working Capital, Banking, and Cash Flow in One Place
Jia’s platform combines three core layers that small businesses have historically had to stitch together from separate providers or go without entirely. Working capital gives business owners fast, affordable access to funds against their receivables, with invoices advanced in under 24 hours. A no-fee, interest-bearing business account provides a place for that capital to sit and grow. Built-in cash flow tools, including automated reconciliation, invoice tracking, and real-time visibility into what’s coming in and going out, tie it all together.

“Before Jia, SMEs like ours were pressed in the middle: either you hope your bank approves you, or you go to a loan shark at 1% per day. We used both. Jia onboarded us in three days at 2-3% on 30-day cycles. But the thing that changed how we actually run this business wasn’t the rate. Peace of mind is very expensive — and now we have an option to run to. We started paying suppliers in advance, negotiating better terms, saying yes to contracts we’d have walked away from before. We’re now in the pipeline to service over 6,000 additional ATMs. That doesn’t happen without Jia,” said Jia customer John Garcia, Commercial Head, Euroline Logistics.

Connecting Small Businesses to Global Capital
A key part of Jia’s model is access to capital. The company operates lending pools that connect small businesses to global investors across networks including Base, Stellar, Arbitrum, Celo, and Polygon. Jia also enables businesses to send and receive cross-border payments using stablecoins, reducing fees, shortening settlement times while opening access to customers and partners globally. Together, this connects local businesses to global capital and removes two of the biggest barriers they face: access to funding and the ability to move money across borders.

“We’ve watched this team spend their careers building financial access in markets that everyone else wrote off — and that track record is why we backed them. What they’ve built at Jia, combining AI underwriting with on-chain capital rails, is the most credible execution we’ve seen on a thesis the industry has been talking about for years: tokenized real-world assets actually working at scale, with novel financial infrastructure connecting emerging market businesses to global capital. That’s the team and the thesis we’ve been waiting to back,” said Nisa Amoils, managing partner at A100x Ventures.

Small businesses are the engine of the global economy and the most systematically underserved. The IFC (International Finance Corporation), a member of the World Bank Group, estimates the financing gap for small and medium enterprises worldwide at $5.7 trillion. In the Philippines alone, demand for SME financing stands at $221 billion against a supply of just $15 billion. Small businesses represent 99% of all enterprises in the country and generate around 63% of total employment. Big banks require collateral most small business owners cannot provide. Many fintech lenders charge rates that solve for access but not affordability. The result is a persistent gap that limits these businesses’ ability to sustain operations, support their communities, and grow.

“A small business owner in Manila used to have two options for capital: her local bank, which wanted collateral she didn’t have, or a loan shark. Now she can tap private credit funds from New York or London — and accept payments from customers anywhere in the world. That’s what we’re building. The global economy, finally open for everyone,” said Zach Marks, co-founder and CEO of Jia.

Jia was founded by a team that has spent their careers working at the intersection of emerging markets and financial access. CEO Zach Marks began his career researching street vendors in India on a Fulbright Fellowship before joining McKinsey to work on economic development. He later joined Tala, where he and co-founder Cheng Cheng helped scale the company from 6,000 to 6 million borrowers across three continents in six years. They left with a clear conviction: the tools to serve small businesses in emerging markets existed, but nobody had built them into a single, integrated system. Jia is that system.

To learn more, go to: jia.xyz

About Jia Founded in 2022, Jia is a fintech company building financial infrastructure for small businesses in emerging markets. The company provides working capital, business banking, and cash flow tools through a single platform, while connecting local businesses to global capital via blockchain-based lending pools.

Contact Information

Maggie Philbin

Partner

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