TED Talks Daily

Episode: Can AI uplift entrepreneurs that traditional banks reject? | Mercedes Bidart

Date: November 29, 2025
Speaker: Mercedes Bidart ([Recorded at TED AI, Vienna, Austria, 2025])

Episode Overview

This episode centers on how artificial intelligence (AI) can be harnessed to enable financial inclusion for entrepreneurs traditionally overlooked by banks, particularly in Latin America. Mercedes Bidart, an impact entrepreneur, shares her journey and tangible solutions for making the invisible currency of "trust" both measurable and actionable—helping small businesses unlock fairer access to financial tools.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Roots and The Currency of Trust

• Background: Mercedes grew up in a family of small business owners in Argentina and witnessed firsthand how crucial community trust was for business survival.
  • "Trust and support from their community were key in keeping the business alive." — Mercedes Bidart [03:13]
• Observed similar dynamics in Colombian informal settlements: businesses operated on trust, not cash or conventional credit.

2. Systemic Exclusion from Formal Credit

• The Contradiction: Those thriving on local trust couldn't access bank loans, due to lack of collateral or formal financial history.
  • "In Latin America, half of our population is excluded from formal credit." — [04:35]
• This reality has significant economic consequences, as 99% of businesses in Latin America are classified as micro businesses.

3. The High Cost of Poverty

• Financial Exclusion: Micro-entrepreneurs forced to buy in small quantities, face higher rates for credit (up to 20% interest per week from predatory lenders).
  • "Being poor is very expensive. Products cost more when you can just afford them in small quantities." — [06:27]
• Story of Maria, a Venezuelan migrant and artisan in Colombia, illustrates these barriers and risks.

4. From Policy to Technology

• Mercedes pivoted from studying political science to deploying tech after realizing policy reform was too slow for urgent needs.
  • "Technology doesn't recognize any geographic boundary." — [05:32]

5. Data: The Invisible Entrepreneur

• Problem Identified: Not a visibility problem, but a lack of suitable data for credit assessment.
  • "We were not facing a visibility problem, we were facing a financial exclusion problem." — [07:10]
• AI models can only process what they have seen, necessitating new datasets for informal entrepreneurs.

Mercedes Bidart's Approach: Making Trust Measurable

1. Data Collection and Model Building

• Early Solutions: Built digital community marketplaces; realized data from entrepreneurs’ phones/social media held economic signals banks ignore.
• Began issuing small $10 loans to build datasets from scratch, focusing intentionally on women for fairness.

2. Three Key AI-Powered Scores

a. Telecom Data Mining

• Analyzing text messages for bill payments, orders, mobile top-ups—building a financial identity from telecom records.
  • "It's a kind of open banking. But instead of using a bank account, we are using telecom data." — [12:08]

b. Video Analysis

• Entrepreneurs send 1-min videos of their business—AI uses computer vision to assess inventory, customer interaction, and business health.
  • "We replace that visit that usually the risk officer is doing to the houses of people... by users sending 1 minute video of their business." — [12:49]

c. Social Media Mapping

• Businesses’ Facebook/Instagram activity (posts, comments, likes), analyzed for engagement and reliability signals.

  • "A business that has a really strong social presence... has more probability to pay back." — [14:05]

• Combined, these innovative scores help determine your likelihood of loan repayment and appropriate loan conditions—instantly.

Impact & Validation

• Outcomes:
  • Over 26,000 entrepreneurs served, models trained with 150,000+ data samples.
  • AI model accuracy surpasses 0.83, meeting global market standards.
    • "After all these three years, we demonstrated that we can use this type of data to understand the informal sector." — [15:41]
• Transformative Shift:
  • Live, regularly updated financial monitoring for entrepreneurs—no need to wait years to become “bankable.”
  • First-time access to formal banking for the informal sector.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "When this same person goes to a bank and asks for a loan to grow this business, they will be rejected. They will tell them, you don't have a collateral, you don't have a financial history. There's no way we can prove who you are." — Mercedes Bidart [04:10]
• "We are building a live financial monitor of the financial well being that it can be updated daily so you don't need to wait years to be eligible for a loan." — [16:27]
• "AI, of course, is improving efficiency. But if we design it with intention, it becomes more than efficient, it becomes fair... It’s allowing us to see gold where others saw stones." — [17:42]
• "To say yes not because of a bank statement, but because of millions of quiet signals that tells us that she shows up, she delivers, and she can be trusted." — [18:20]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:08] — Personal background; how local trust shapes businesses in Argentina & Colombia
• [06:27] — Financial exclusion and the high cost of poverty
• [07:10] — Pivot from policy to technology as a tool for change
• [09:40] — Building datasets where none exist, using tiny loans and real-world data
• [11:57] — Three proprietary AI scores for evaluating entrepreneurs
• [15:39] — Impact metrics and live financial monitoring
• [16:27] — Transformation for the financial sector
• [17:42] — Vision of AI as an engine of fairness and inclusion

Conclusion

Mercedes Bidart’s talk spotlights how thoughtfully designed AI can shift paradigms in finance: making trust visible, empowering millions of informal entrepreneurs, and challenging the legacy of exclusion in banking. With a blend of personal narrative, real-world stories, and technical solutions, Bidart offers hope and a blueprint for a more just, data-driven financial system.