Many small businesses apply for funding, but some discover a harsh reality: “Talent and ideas are equally distributed, but access to capital and economic opportunity is not,” said Kristen Fanarakis, associate director, Small Business, Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth at the Milken Institute.

She was moderator for a panel “How AI and data can reshape community lending” with Andrew Leon Hanna, co-founder and CEO of Mona, a new AI-powered finance platform, and Nicole van der Tuin, chief experience officer at Accion Opportunity Fund (AOF), held at the Mastercard Data for Inclusive Growth Forum on Sept. 29. Fanarakis is co-author, with Alexander Meeks, of “ A New Agenda for Small Business Support in an Age of Uncertainty ,” a report that looks at how organizations that support small business can become more adaptive, in part through the use of AI.

While the panel focused on access to capital in the U.S., Fanarakis said, “this is a global, systemic problem for all small businesses.”

For many years, there weren’t many answers to gaps in affordable funding, other than solutions such as microlending. Now, AI may offer some new opportunities to borrowers, according to the panelists. Here are six ways AI may narrow the funding gap in the future.

1. Simplifying small business owners’ money hunt. While 60% of small businesses applied for financing in the past 12 months, only 42% received the full amount they sought, according to the Fed’s 2026 Report on Employer Firms , based on the Small Business Credit Survey in the fall of 2025.

“ Across thousands of small businesses in the US, the biggest pain point is capital access,” noted Hanna. “Before that, though, owners struggle to navigate the options: what funding they need, how much, what type (equity, debt, grants, government funding), how it will affect their bottom line, and where to find it. Small businesses spend five-plus hours a week searching and applying for funding.”

Hanna and his co-founder Anny Dow created Mona to pull the fragmented small-business financing ecosystem into one place, he said. Once an owner completes a common application, the business is matched to best-fit loans, grants, government funding, incentives, and RFPs, using AI. One baklava bakery it worked with in Brooklyn recently secured a $25,000 low-interest loan, then raised angel financing, he said. Mona recently announced a $3.5 million venture round led by Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners, Sheryl Sandberg’s venture fund. Mastercard has also backed Mona, through its Strive USA Innovation Fund.

2. Speeding underwriting. AOF is the largest CDFI nonprofit in the U.S. focused on small businesses. It provides capital and financial education, concentrating on low-income and economically distressed communities. It mostly funds well-established businesses with annual revenue between $100,000 and $5 million, offering small business term loans, SBA loans, equipment leasing, and financing for equipment such as vehicles, according to van der Tuin.

van der Tuin said her organization “mainly uses AI to augment processes,” such as keeping underwriters informed about a loan application more quickly. “It supports the human-driven process while keeping guardrails in mind,” she said.

A recent report by the San Francisco Fed found that AI reduces the cost of processing hard information, such as credit scores, financial statements and formal credit histories, and could be used by small lenders to process “soft” data, such as borrower relationships and knowledge of local economic conditions that provides a more nuanced look. However, using AI for the soft data could hurt small and midsize businesses, the report notes. “Because soft information is harder to process using currently available AI tools, AI adoption might tilt bank lending away from SMEs,” the report says.

However, lenders are paying attention to those limitations for soft data. “Automation reduces the time and labor costs of processing information and underwriting,” van der Tuin said, “but it still can’t capture soft information the way AOF needs.”

3. Creating a clearer picture of cash flow. Substantiating claimed revenue typically means exporting PDF bank statements and documents from different merchant systems, van der Tuin explained. Using AI can speed things up, if owners opt to share cash flow information with a loan application and make it easier for lenders to identify indicators they need to ask applicants about, she said.

AOF also uses indicators such as GPS data on the vehicles it finances. “It can see when mileage is decreasing and truckers are getting fewer loads and proactively reach out to offer support,” van der Tuin said.

4. Protecting small businesses from predatory lending. AOF is building tools to help small business owners protect themselves and identify ways to get liquidity that don’t require a loan.

“ Predatory lending is ubiquitous, pricing is opaque, and the damage to businesses and households is pervasive,” said van der Tuin.

5. Educating small business owners. AOF has in the past year started providing an automated, personalized learning plan for every application that they see at the time of a loan decision determining if they qualify for capital or not.

“If they are qualified, that learning plan is focused on using some of their application information to inform guidance about how to be successful with their loan, which is not always as intuitive as you might think,” she said. “If they’re not qualified for capital, we want to give them clear guidance about what they can do to qualify, because that process is often pretty opaque.”

AOF tracks the credit report and the credit history of borrowers, particularly for those taking out unsecured loans, “making sure that at the household level, the people who are getting financing for their businesses are maintaining their overall access to credit and financial health,” she said.

6. Providing real-time coaching. Mona is partnering with Mastercard Strive USA and AOF to build hybrid AI-and-human coaching so every small business owner can have a financial health coach “in their pocket, without having to wait in line or lacking a network or adviser,” Hanna said.

“Small business owners make high-stakes decisions quickly while wearing many hats,” he said. “One decision can lead to generational wealth, local hiring, and an institution that matters to a neighborhood. The wrong one, such as taking on the wrong type of debt, a cost of capital that’s too high, or a personal guarantee, can close the business and have dire consequences for the family. These decisions shouldn’t be left to chance.”