Fair Access to Capital: How Finance Can Fuel Economic Mobility

When we talk about financial services, it’s easy to focus on products — lending, payments, insurance. But for millions of small business owners worldwide, finance is about something far bigger: opportunity.

Access to capital isn’t just a transaction. It’s often the difference between survival and failure, stagnation and growth, poverty and prosperity. And when done right, finance has the power to drive economic mobility and social progress — not just in the UK or US, but globally.

This piece is part of our “Shaping the Future of Small Business Finance” series. As embedded finance evolves, its true power lies in removing structural barriers, unlocking opportunities for small business owners everywhere.

Small businesses are often called the “backbone” of the economy. They power local communities, drive innovation, and employ millions of people. But starting and sustaining a small business is incredibly tough.

The data is stark. In the US, 25% of new restaurants fail in their first year. In Europe and the UK, small businesses face similarly high risks.

Too often, these failures aren’t due to a lack of ambition or good ideas. The biggest barrier is access to resources, especially funding.

Many small business owners struggle to get loans without providing personal guarantees, risking their homes or savings just to keep their businesses afloat. The system is skewed against them.

The traditional narrative of economic mobility, the idea that anyone can build a better life through hard work and entrepreneurship, is becoming harder to achieve.

In the US, only 15% of people born in the bottom 20% of earners make it to the top 20%.

In Europe, that figure drops to 7-10%.

In the UK, it’s similarly low.

One of the biggest drivers of this stagnation is the lack of access to fair, fast, and flexible finance.

When small business owners can’t access capital, they can’t grow. When they can’t grow, they can’t hire, invest, or move up the economic ladder.

The reality is that the traditional financial system was never built to serve small businesses, especially sole traders, new entrepreneurs, immigrants, or those without long credit histories.

In the UK and US, 80% of all funding goes to the largest 20% of businesses. That leaves the remaining 80% fighting over the scraps.

Over the last decade, access to small business loans, overdrafts, and flexible credit lines has declined sharply, leaving small business owners with fewer options and more obstacles.

What if access to capital wasn’t based on outdated credit scores, personal guarantees, or lengthy application processes, but on real-time data that reflects how a business is actually performing?

That’s the model enabled by embedded finance.

By partnering with platforms like eBay, Worldpay, and others, fintech providers like Liberis can use real transaction data to assess a small business’s financial health and offer pre-approved, fair funding without the red tape or bias.

This approach gives business owners the ability to:

• Seize growth opportunities
• Manage cash flow
• Invest in employees, marketing, or inventory
• Build a sustainable business — and a better future

This isn’t just about fintech. It’s about society.

When small businesses have fair access to capital, local economies grow, jobs are created, and people move up the economic ladder.

Without it, we risk creating what economists call a “hopelessness economy”, a system where the odds are stacked against anyone trying to get ahead, where economic mobility stalls, and entrepreneurship becomes a luxury rather than a pathway.

The future of finance shouldn’t be about more paperwork or more hurdles. It should be about unlocking potential.

At its best, finance can do far more than enable transactions. It can open doors, level the playing field, and give small business owners everywhere the chance to thrive.

That’s the mission behind embedded finance and the work being done at Liberis. Because when small businesses succeed, entire communities rise with them.

In the next post, we’ll shift focus to trust, friction, and the psychological barriers that stop entrepreneurs from applying for finance, and how pre-approval can change the game.

Up next in the series: we’ll explore how trust, friction, and psychological barriers are widening the SME finance gap, and why pre-approval could be the key to unlocking more confident, empowered borrowing.