In much of the West, access to credit is taken for granted. Banks rely on long credit histories, stable wages, and government datasets to determine who qualifies for loans.
But for billions of people globally, those systems do not exist or do not work. Builders working on Solana say crypto based lending models are forcing a rethink of how credit risk is actually measured.
During a recent interview with TheStreet Roundtable at Solana Breakpoint, Nicolas Cabrera, chief product officer at Tala, explained that many of the customers his company serves are not high risk by choice, but by circumstance.
A blind spot for banks
“A lot of our customers are underserved by banks or unbanked,” he explained. “They are small and medium sized business owners who are running actual operations but do not have the formal income statements or credit histories that banks require.”
Instead of trying to force those borrowers into legacy credit scoring systems, Cabrera said his team built new underwriting models from the ground up.
“The traditional way that banks or financial institutions try to create a score or a risk level for that audience does not work,” he said. “Those systems depend on centralized data that simply does not exist for a large portion of the world.”
Instead, Tala uses proprietary data. Cabrera described a system that collects information directly from borrowers and uses machine learning to assess risk dynamically.
Accessing credit without traditional documentation
That includes behavioral data, device level signals, and real time insights into how a business operates.
“We built some very smart models to understand their level of risk and their propensity of repaying the loan,” he said.
One example involves image based inputs. Borrowers can upload photos of their storefront inventory or operations, which are then analyzed for signals related to activity scale and revenue potential.
“Out of that picture we can actually get very interesting signals,” Cabrera said. “We can see inventory levels, foot traffic indicators, and things that help us understand whether a business is active and generating revenue.”
Risk management is intentionally incremental. Cabrera said loans typically begin small with short durations.
“We start with smaller loans and shorter terms,” he said. “As customers repay successfully, our confidence grows and the model adjusts alongside them.”
That feedback loop allows both credit limits and pricing to evolve over time.
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That adaptive approach changes the lender-borrower relationship. Instead of issuing one time loans, the platform is designed to grow with businesses as data quality improves. Over time, uncertainty declines and credit becomes easier to price.
After operating off chain for more than a decade, Cabrera said the company is now bringing parts of its lending and liquidity infrastructure onto Solana.
“We have been doing this off chain for over 10 years,” he said. “Now we are moving parts of that infrastructure on chain where liquidity and settlement can be more efficient.”
The broader implication reaches beyond crypto. By redefining how creditworthiness is measured, Solana based lending models are challenging assumptions embedded in global finance.
For small businesses long excluded from traditional banking, access to capital may finally reflect real economic activity rather than missing paperwork.