French fintech providing short-term financing for SMBs, offering fast, API-driven credit such as invoice and inventory financing.
Defacto is a French fintech that provides short-term financing to small and medium-sized businesses. Rather than operating like a traditional bank lender, Defacto is built API-first: it plugs into the platforms where SMBs already work — marketplaces, invoicing and procurement tools, fintech products — so financing can be offered in context, and it also serves businesses more directly. Typical use cases are the classic working-capital gaps: bridging the delay between issuing an invoice and getting paid, financing inventory purchases, or covering supplier payments ahead of revenue.
The pitch is speed and simplicity compared with bank credit: decisions driven by data on the business's actual activity, short application flows, and flexible drawdowns for short durations, with fees tied to the amount and time borrowed.
Financing sits alongside — not inside — your accounting and invoicing tools. Defacto's role is to smooth timing gaps: revenue that is earned but not yet collected, or stock that must be paid for before it sells. It complements rather than replaces a bank relationship, and it is most valuable for businesses with healthy margins but lumpy cash timing, such as e-commerce sellers, wholesalers, and agencies with slow-paying clients.
As with any lender, the details matter more than the category. Before using Defacto — or any short-term financing provider — check the effective cost of borrowing for your typical amount and duration, eligibility for your country and legal form, how repayment is collected, and what happens if a financed invoice is paid late. Financing is a tool for smoothing timing gaps, not a fix for a structurally unprofitable business.
Short-term credit also works best when it is used deliberately, and that requires visibility. Software for cash flow management, connected to your bank accounts, shows you when a gap is coming, how large it will be, and how long it will last — which tells you whether to borrow, how much, and for how long. Forecast first, finance second: that order keeps borrowing cheap and intentional instead of reactive.