KEO Capital has launched operations in Canada with a new subsidiary and an agreement for a revolving senior loan facility of up to $50 million with a leading Canadian bank, as the financial technology company expands its B2B payment and financing platform into the Canadian market.
The company said that its Canadian operations will be conducted through Workeo Canada, extending a platform that allows businesses to access working capital, pay suppliers, anticipate receivables and manage payments through a single digital system.
KEO Capital said the Canadian launch builds on its operations in Latin America, where it has operated since 2020. The company is establishing a local leadership team as part of what it describes as a long-term presence in Canada.
Working capital and supplier payments
The company’s Workeo platform is designed to address the timing gap between supplier payments and buyer obligations. Suppliers can wait 30, 60 or 90 days to be paid, while buyers seek to manage payment obligations and maintain supplier relationships, according to KEO.
Through Workeo, businesses can apply for financing and, once approved, obtain a revolving credit facility that can be used to extend payment terms for supplier invoices and operating expenses through the platform.
The company said the arrangement is intended to give buyers greater flexibility in managing their finances while allowing suppliers to gain faster access to receivables and improve their working capital cycle.
Workeo also uses blockchain technology to support what the company describes as secure, transparent and instant B2B payment execution for local transactions.
KEO Capital said the platform connects buyers and suppliers while providing faster access to funds and working capital. It also offers flexible payment terms, blockchain-supported transaction processing and local payment capabilities.
The financing platform is aimed at mid-market and enterprise businesses in sectors including manufacturing, construction, logistics, wholesale distribution, professional services, multi-location retail and health care.
Canadian expansion
The company’s Canadian services are currently available in Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba and the Atlantic provinces. Availability may vary by province and is subject to applicable regulatory requirements. KEO Capital said its services are not currently offered in Quebec or Saskatchewan.
Roberto Marchiori, KEO Capital’s chief executive officer, said the Canadian operation will also give the company an opportunity to incorporate feedback from local customers into its platform.
“Launching KEO Capital’s operations in Canada marks an important milestone in the roll-out of our Workeo platform. Establishing a foothold in such an important, dynamic, and significant market enables us to provide local-currency payment solutions to help more businesses improve cash flow, strengthen supplier relationships, and manage payments. As we grow our Canadian team and work alongside our Canadian customers, their insights will strengthen the Workeo platform,” said Marchiori.
Company structure
KEO Capital AB (publ.), previously known as Maha Capital AB, describes itself as a technology-driven financial solutions provider focused on B2B supply-chain financing and corporate travel and expense management.
The company operates a digital platform through which buyers and suppliers can interact using solutions addressing corporate payables.
KEO Capital also holds an indirect 24 per cent equity stake in Venezuelan oil company PetroUrdaneta and has entered into a binding agreement to increase that indirect interest to 40 per cent.
In an interview with Retail Insider, Marchiori talked about the company’s latest news.
Question: How significant is the late-payment problem for Canadian businesses today, and what are the biggest downstream effects you’re seeing across retail supply chains?
Answer: It’s more significant than most people outside procurement and treasury teams realize. Statistics Canada reports that 62.2% of Canadian businesses are facing cost-related obstacles and data reveals 44% of Canadian B2B credit sales as overdue.
That’s nearly half of business-to-business trade sitting past terms. Suppliers are routinely waiting to get paid, while buyers are under real pressure to hold onto cash to protect their own liquidity.
The downstream effect is a slow squeeze that moves through the whole chain. When a large buyer stretches payment terms, its suppliers stretch terms with their suppliers, and working capital that could be funding inventory, hiring or growth ends up parked in receivables instead.
In retail specifically, we’re also seeing tariff-driven uncertainty push some businesses to buy defensively, building inventory early to get ahead of potential cost increases, which ties up even more capital and adds warehousing and markdown risk on top of the payment-timing problem.
So you have two working-capital pressures compounding each other at once: slower payments and more defensive inventory. That combination is what’s actually showing up in the numbers.
KEO helps businesses close the cash-flow gap faster than traditional options, empowering buyers with greater flexibility and purchasing power while enabling suppliers to receive payment sooner.
Q: What makes Workeo different from other working capital or invoice financing solutions already available in the Canadian market?
A: Most platforms in this space solve one side of the problem. A factoring company will advance a supplier cash against its receivables. A line of credit gives a buyer more room to pay later.
Workeo, our B2B payment and financing platform, is unique because it combines B2B payments and financing in one place, and it’s built specifically around the recurring nature of supplier relationships, not one-off transactions.
Buyers get a revolving credit facility to finance recurring inventory purchases and extend payment terms on supplier invoices, and suppliers on the other side of that same transaction get paid faster. Neither party has to separately negotiate financing; it’s built into the payment itself, and the facility renews automatically as the relationship continues, rather than requiring a fresh application every cycle.
The platform is also blockchain-powered, which means secure, transparent, and near-instant settlement rather than the multi-day reconciliation that’s typical of traditional B2B payment rails, with 24/7 visibility into where a transaction stands.
On the underwriting side, our four-step digital application typically takes about a month to establish eligibility, faster than many traditional facilities.
Q: Which types of Canadian retailers, suppliers, or industries stand to benefit most from faster supplier payments, and can you share any early examples or case studies?
A: We built Workeo for mid-market and enterprise businesses with recurring, inventory-heavy purchasing cycles, including multi-location retail, wholesale distribution, manufacturing, construction, logistics and professional services.
Retailers and distributors carrying seasonal, technology or other discretionary inventory are especially exposed right now, because that’s exactly the inventory that gets pulled forward when businesses are hedging against tariffs, which makes flexible working capital more valuable.
This is the model we’ve built and proven across Latin America, where Workeo has facilitated more than US$1 billion in financing since 2020.
Companies use inventory financing to increase purchasing power and secure better pricing on products. Manufacturers embed financing into their customer purchases to support dealers buying inventory. Resellers use flexible inventory financing to close the gap between what their suppliers demand and what their customers pay.
Multi-location retail and distribution businesses in Canada face a very similar cash-conversion gap, which is why we expect that sector to be an early and natural fit here.
Q: Why did KEO Capital choose to expand into Canada now, and what opportunities or challenges do you see in the Canadian business and retail landscape?
A: Canada is our next phase of that growth because it’s a market that’s dynamic, significant and, frankly, underserved on the working-capital side relative to its size.
The timing lines up with having a structured lending facility in place with a leading Canadian bank, which gave us the confidence and the local-currency capacity to launch properly, with a dedicated Toronto-based team rather than a remote presence.
The opportunity is real. Canada has sophisticated financial infrastructure and a large base of mid-market businesses, and right now, an environment shaped by tariffs, trade uncertainty and cost pressure means flexible working capital matters more than it did a few years ago.
We’re currently live in Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba and the Atlantic provinces, and not yet in Quebec or Saskatchewan, so building out that footprint responsibly is part of the work ahead. We see that as something to work through methodically, not around.
Q: Looking ahead, how do you expect payment practices and access to working capital to evolve in Canada over the next few years, particularly if economic pressures and tariffs persist?
A: If tariff pressure and trade uncertainty persist, I think we’ll see even less of an appetite for static, one-size-fits-all terms and more demand for financing that flexes with the business cycle.
Businesses that buy inventory early to get ahead of a tariff schedule need capital that can move with that decision, not a fixed loan that was sized for a different set of assumptions. That favours revolving, embedded financing over one-off borrowing.
I’d also expect the payments infrastructure itself to keep catching up.
Canada’s move toward real-time payment rails and open banking is going to make faster settlement more accessible across the board, which plays directly into what blockchain-powered platforms like Workeo already do. And as supply chains diversify away from single-market sourcing, businesses will need working capital solutions that can support new supplier relationships quickly rather than waiting on lengthy underwriting.
My expectation is that payment flexibility stops being a nice-to-have and becomes a basic competitiveness question for Canadian businesses, which is really the premise we built Workeo, our B2B financing and payment platform, around.
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