Author: Darren Tredgold, General Manager at Independent Steel Company
I manage a steel distribution company with three branches across South-East NSW. We supply structural steel, roofing, fencing, and livestock equipment to builders, farmers, and contractors. On paper, we sell steel. In practice, we run one of the oldest financial products in existence.
Every time we extend 30, 60, or 90 day payment terms to a builder, we are making a lending decision. We assess credit risk based on years of relationship history, carry receivables that sometimes stretch past six figures, and absorb the float between paying our own mills and collecting from our customers. However, if you asked anyone in fintech to describe our business, they would call us a wholesaler. That framing misses the point entirely.
Trade credit is fintech’s oldest product
Trade credit predates banking. When a distributor ships $80,000 worth of steel to a construction site on 60 day terms, that is an unsecured business loan issued without a credit committee and without a fintech platform in sight.
According to the World Bank, the global SME finance gap sits at $5.7 trillion. Distributors extending trade credit already fill a significant portion of that gap. Consequently, every regional distributor in Australia is making dozens of credit decisions per week based on relationship history rather than algorithms.
The building materials distribution market exceeds $800 billion across North America and Europe. Materials account for 50 to 70 percent of average construction project costs. As a result, the trade credit extended by distributors collectively represents one of the largest pools of informal business lending on the planet. Yet it does not appear in any fintech market report.
Why 89 percent of invoices are still on paper
Spenda’s research shows that 89 percent of Australian businesses still issue paper or PDF-based invoices. In 2026. While fintech has digitised consumer payments and retail checkout, the B2B supply chain that moves billions in materials every month runs on emailed PDFs and manual reconciliation.
For a regional distributor, this means our accounts team spends hours each week matching payments to invoices and chasing overdue accounts by phone. Meanwhile, a builder juggling 15 supplier accounts has no consolidated view of outstanding trade credit and no way to optimise cash flow across their supply chain.
The tools exist. Real-time payment rails like Australia’s PayTo system can replace legacy direct debit. AI-powered reconciliation can match payments automatically. Embedded lending platforms can convert trade credit into formal financial products. Therefore, the question is not whether digitisation is possible. It is why fintech has not targeted the supply chain that needs it most.
The cooperative model fintech should study
One organisation has already figured this out. Capricorn Society, Australasia’s largest trade cooperative, serves over 30,000 members and 2,000 preferred suppliers. Members say “put it on my Capricorn account” without realising they are using a comprehensive embedded finance ecosystem.
Capricorn provides consolidated invoicing, trade credit, equipment financing, insurance, a rewards program, and member dividends. In other words, it functions as a full-service financial institution wearing a trade cooperative’s uniform.
The retention dynamics are powerful. A mechanic or builder whose entire purchasing relationship flows through Capricorn faces enormous switching costs. Similarly, suppliers benefit from guaranteed payment and reduced credit risk. It looks remarkably like what fintech companies spend millions trying to build from scratch.
According to BCG’s 2025 embedded finance research, platforms with embedded payments achieve 2.5 times lower customer attrition than those without. Capricorn has been proving these economics for decades.
The data sitting inside every distributor
Beyond the lending and payment functions, regional distributors generate data that fintech companies would find valuable. We know which builders are growing because their order volumes increase quarter over quarter. Payment cycles tell us which ones are struggling. And materials get ordered before construction begins, so we see project pipelines before they show up in any public data.
This operational data could power better credit underwriting than anything built from bank transaction history alone. A builder who consistently orders $200,000 in steel per quarter and pays within 45 days represents a different risk profile than one whose orders are erratic and payments stretch to 90 days. Because of this, the distributor’s accounts receivable ledger is a real-time credit scoring model that nobody has digitised.
Toast uses restaurant transaction data to power merchant lending. ServiceTitan leverages job management data for embedded financing. That same logic applies to regional distribution. A distributor who knows a builder’s purchasing patterns and payment reliability is better positioned to underwrite a loan than any bank analysing the same builder’s financials from the outside.
Where the opportunity sits
The embedded finance market is valued at approximately $146 billion in 2025, with projections reaching $690 billion by 2031. More than 80 percent remains untapped.
Regional distributors already have the customer relationships, the transaction data, and the informal credit infrastructure. What they lack is the technology layer that converts these assets into scalable financial products. Any fintech company that builds for this vertical will not need to acquire customers. They are already there, processing millions in trade credit every month on paper invoices and handshake terms.
We have been running shadow banks for decades. It is time fintech noticed.
Darren Tredgold is the General Manager of Independent Steel Company, an Australian-owned steel distributor serving South-East NSW since 2000.