How better small business data contributes to the UN’s 2030 Agenda

Markaaz, a fintech scale-up that specializes in superior small and medium-sized business data, joined global leaders in the 78^th United Nations General Assembly’s SDG Summit at the UN Headquarters in New York.

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) represent 99% of all global businesses. We all have someone among our friends or family who owns a business or contributes to an SMB. In many economies, SMBs account for a significant part of the GDP, and people’s livelihood and prosperity. The importance of SMB’s well-being to overall economic conditions is well known.   

Markaaz, a global technology company, is setting a new standard in small business data and solutions. Small business data is used at the point of onboarding for various services such as applying for a bank account, credit card, loan, insurance, or a FedEx account – those are all important life moments of a small business. The company collaborates with enterprises worldwide, helping them to verify and approve a larger number of small businesses for essential services. Markaaz also empowers small businesses by giving them the ability to see and update the public data used by these enterprises for their business verification. This benefits both enterprises and small businesses, resulting in more SMBs accessing the financial resources they need to grow. 

The SMB data problem is not recent. It’s a 40-year-old challenge affecting multiple industries. For financial institutions, small business fraud has been on the rise, peaking during COVID. The Small Business Administration (SBA) estimated they disbursed $200 billion, or 17%, of Payroll Protection Programs (PPP) loans to potentially fraudulent actors.  

Markaaz offers solutions that empower companies to quickly and accurately validate small business customers, vendors, and partners. Enterprises can find, verify, and approve more small businesses than any other provider so small business owners get fast access to the critical services they need to grow and thrive.   

Every year five million new small businesses register in the US alone, which is representative of this ever-changing environment. Markaaz recognizes that and enables enterprises to have an ongoing connection with the small businesses they serve. Through Markaaz-powered business and compliance monitoring, enterprises can be more active in their servicing, while informing their decision making and reducing risks.  

Markaaz's journey towards sustainable development has evolved naturally over the years. Some of the use cases the company supports include better connectivity between enterprise and SMB, which in retail (and other industries) can mean applying SMB data monitoring to reduce the number of failed ground delivery attempts, which can lower CO2 emissions, and reduce the impact on the environment. 

At the 78^th United Nations General Assembly and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Summit, where world leaders and international organizations have gathered to debate world matters, Markaaz joined in a session about ‘Game-changers: applying technology, innovation, and data for transformative action.’ Markaaz’s data solutions contribute to multiple SDS, including supporting economic growth (SDG 8), fostering innovation and industry development (SDG 9), and facilitating data collaboration between financial institutions, banks, insurance companies, marketplaces, and small businesses, building synergies that leave no one behind (SDG 17).  

Markaaz, a member of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), plans to bring further partnership opportunities to this forum over the coming months.  

The company can next be met at EuroFinance in Barcelona, on September 27, and at the Money20/20 conference in Las Vegas from October 22-25.