Abstract
Trade credit—suppliers allowing buyers to purchase inventory now and pay later—is central to firm-to-firm commerce but depends on trust. In low-enforcement environments, the same information frictions that ration trade credit also block access to formal lenders (MFIs, banks, fintechs). We ask: can firms use mobile money sales records to signal creditworthiness to suppliers and formal lenders — an open finance model — and how does this shape credit access and market outcomes? We run an RCT in Abidjan in partnership with a large mobile money operator and a fintech that specializes in trade credit. We randomly assign 3,000 retailers in the packaged drinks sector to one of three mobile money groups: control, access to a dashboard of their aggregated sales records, or dashboard access with an option to export a branded PDF containing a digital business card and these records. We cross-randomize these with an introduction to the fintech to test whether specialized lenders are better able to translate digital records into financing than typical suppliers. Outcomes include credit access, supplier relationships, mobile money usage, product variety, prices, and stockouts.