Mercedes Bidart
Mercedes Bidart is a political scientist trained at the University of Buenos Aires and holds a master’s degree in city planning from MIT, where she developed a thesis to redesign risk assessment in the informal economy. In 2021, she founded Quipu in Colombia, a fintech that enables productive credit for microbusinesses excluded due to negative or nonexistent credit histories. Her leadership combines urban policy, product design, and data, with a focus on neighborhood commerce.
Applied training
Her work in territorial development contexts consolidated an operational reading of popular-income dynamics: daily cash flow, small inventory, high turnover, and frequent shocks. At MIT, she incorporated planning and measurement tools to turn that diagnosis into a replicable system, where financial inclusion is defined as sustainable access to capital rather than episodic borrowing.
The problem Quipu tackles
In low-income neighborhoods, many businesses operate outside formal systems, without audited statements or banking history. Traditional banking models risk using past variables, which penalizes anyone who faced a crisis or was never banked. Bidart shifted evaluation toward present-day business signals, separating repayment capacity from administrative stigma and expanding access.
From thesis to a company in Colombia
Quipu was built as a product response to a simple finding: neighborhood commerce leaves verifiable traces even without formal paperwork. The project took shape in Colombia with a focus on urban micro-entrepreneurs and was designed as infrastructure for credit origination and risk analysis. The decision to operate there prioritizes scale, business density, and adoption of digital payments.
How the alternative score works
Quipu uses artificial intelligence to build a score from alternative and behavioral data: digital activity, evidence of work, sales dynamics, and operational consistency. The model automates pre-assessments, detects patterns, and estimates probability of repayment. The technical logic is to convert dispersed signals into comparable variables, with calibration and bias monitoring.
Credit product and experience
The process is designed for speed and low friction: digital application, remote verification, and disbursement oriented to working capital. Instead of requiring typical guarantees, it relies on the score and on follow-up performance tracking, which then feeds the borrower’s history. The proposal frames microcredit as a management tool—restocking, wholesale purchasing, equipment upgrades—rather than an emergency outlet.
Leadership as ceo
The central task is not only growth, but sustaining portfolio quality. Bidart combines a risk culture with user-centered design: progressive limits, pricing consistent with risk profile, and clear collection rules. In inclusion fintech, the product includes implicit financial education: terms, costs, and consequences made explicit in the interface. That approach reduces delinquency driven by misunderstanding and protects reputation.
Partnerships and distribution
Quipu relies on integrations with mass platforms to reach merchants where they already operate: wallets, telecoms, and financial institutions that provide channels, payments, and validations. The strategy reduces CAC and accelerates model learning. In parallel, the company explored pilots to connect origination with new funding sources, seeking to diversify capital and sustain competitive rates.
Scale and measurable impact
Public information circulated in 2025 attributes to Quipu more than USD 7 million in productive credit and a base of 35,000 entrepreneurs served, with around 20,000 active customers. Impact is not measured only in disbursements: it is observed in inventory continuity, gradual formalization of cash flows, and access to wholesale pricing. For the system, these aggregates add traceability and learning about informal risk.
Recognitions
In 2024, Bidart was selected as a fellow of the Cartier Women’s Initiative, a program recognizing women-led ventures focused on impact and scalability. In 2025, she joined MIT Technology Review (Spanish edition) innovators under 35 LATAM. These milestones operate as validation signals for partners and funders, and push the strengthening of governance, data ethics, and transparency.
Influence beyond the business
Her profile bridges entrepreneurship and the public agenda. By working on credit for the informal economy, she intervenes in debates on consumer protection, digital identity, and regulation of algorithmic models. The innovation is not only technical: it defines which data are relevant, how credit decisions are explained, and how the right to review is guaranteed. That framework enables dialogue with academia, regulators, and social organizations.
Medium-term vision
Quipu’s ambition is to become a credit bureau designed for the informal economy in Latin America. In product terms, it means moving from “loan” to “infrastructure”: an interoperable score, portable history, and service layers (insurance, payments, savings). The challenge will be to scale without losing local precision, sustain stable funding, and keep models auditable as data volume grows.
