What would happen to Cashea if banks start lending again?

In an earlier article for SurEconomics, I argued that Cashea and the banks serve different markets. This week the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) announced a measure that forces a rethink of that view: for the first time since 2022, it cut part of the reserve requirement. If banks lend more heavily again, what happens to Cashea? It is worth starting with the actual size of bank credit.

According to the Latin American Federation of Banks (Felaban), in 2024 the loan portfolio amounted to just 2% of GDP, against an average of 47.6% in Latin America. At the close of September 2026 it totaled USD 4,123.23 million, according to the Global Scope report published by Finanzas Digital.

What changed with Resolution No. 26-08-02. The reserve requirement is the share of deposits that each bank must keep immobilized at the BCV; whatever is held in reserve cannot be lent out. Since 2022 that ratio has been 73%, while in most of Latin America it is below 10% and in Brazil it is around 20%, according to El Estímulo. The new resolution, in effect since September 15, cuts the requirement on bolívar-denominated time deposits at universal and commercial banks to 50%, and from 40% to 27% for microfinance banks that meet BCV requirements. Demand and savings deposits remain at 73%.

The scope is small because time deposits make up little of the system. According to El Estímulo's calculations, 99.4% of the money in banking remains subject to the 73% requirement, and what banks could lend again comes to about Bs 7,900 million, or roughly USD 9 million. Economist Hermes Pérez estimates that the loan book would grow by between 0.1% and 0.4% of GDP by year-end. The measure matters more as a signal than as liquidity.

Two models funded differently. A bank lends out the deposits it takes in, and the reserve requirement limits how much of that money can be lent. As of September, public deposits totaled USD 6,554.93 million and the loan book represented 30.15% of system assets, according to Global Scope. Cashea, by contrast, does not intermediate deposits: allied merchants finance the purchase, and the platform assesses the customer, collects the installments and makes up the amount if the customer does not pay, as its founders explained to Forbes. Its equity comes from investors: in 2026 it raised USD 100 million, consisting of a USD 40 million Series A, which included USD 20 million in debt from Architect Capital, and a USD 60 million Series B, according to Seedtable.

This leads to something that is often overlooked: the reserve requirement does not directly touch Cashea's engine. In my view, a broad cut would not take away its funding; it could even make credit cheaper for the merchants that sustain its model. And its scale is not small: according to the company's own figures, it tops 10 million accounts, more than half the adult population, and 40,000 affiliated merchants, and it moves more than USD 300 million a month, the equivalent of 3.5% of GDP.

Why the niches do not collide, for now. The difference in funding is passed on to the customer, and I see three reasons each player keeps its space. The first is the product: Cashea finances short-term consumption (phones, appliances, furniture) with a down payment and interest-free installments every 14 days, while banks target larger amounts and longer terms, such as Banesco's 48-month vehicle loan or BBVA Provincial's payroll loan of up to six times the monthly salary. The second is requirements: to register with Cashea, an ID card (cédula) and a selfie are enough, whereas BBVA Provincial asks for a vehicle loan to include the latest ISLR tax return, a employment letter showing at least one year of seniority and up to six months of bank statements. For someone who is self-employed or is paid in cash, that list is a barrier to entry.

The third is trust already built. Endeavor reports more than 110 million transactions; divided by 10 million accounts, that is about 11 per account, a calculation of my own that measures frequency more than loyalty. The delinquency rate the company reports is 0.9%, close to the banking sector's 0.96% as of March 2026, according to Finanzas Digital. And in 2023 more than 95% of its users had never had access to credit, according to Bloomberg. For that group, Cashea was their first credit relationship, not an alternative to banking.

Where they could clash. The thesis of separate niches has a clear limit. The salaried worker with a payroll account and clean bank statements is the customer the banks want back, and today he also buys with Cashea. If banks start issuing credit cards with useful limits again, that segment will have an option with longer terms and no down payment. Competition can also come through merchants: if a merchant obtains cheap bank financing to sell on credit on its own, Cashea's intermediation loses value for it. And the movement runs both ways, because Cashea announced it will allocate its new capital to additional financial products, according to Bloomberg Línea. The more it resembles a bank, the closer it comes to banking's territory.

A revival that will take time. The cut frees up about USD 9 million in a system with more than USD 6.5 billion in deposits, and concentration does not help either: in September 2025, the ten largest institutions held 91.36% of bank lending, according to Finanzas Digital. In my view, Cashea does not face the risk of a full, sudden revival, because that revival does not look close. Its risk is gradual: that banks win back, customer by customer, the formal consumer who today buys in installments because he has no other option. The figure to watch is not the time-deposit requirement, but the day the BCV touches the 73% on demand deposits.