How Recurring Shop Revenue Pays Suppliers Instantly | Dan Pascone with Andi Pereira | Ep #28

Andi (Anderson) Pereira is the founder and CEO of Capital, a fintech aimed at what he calls one of the biggest pain points for small businesses: cash flow. He says he launched the company in 2023 after spending over a year studying small business finance during his master's program in the US, where he looked at regulation and technology disruption. Before Capital, he ran Universia, a company he describes as offering scholarships, courses, and training to help students reach universities and the job market. Dan notes that Andi splits his time between São Paulo and New York. Andi says you can find him on LinkedIn under Andi Pereira or Anderson Pereira.

Andi is a guest, his views are his own, and we have no stake in Capital, a private company. [VERIFY: Dan to confirm no relationship or compensation, and confirm the company name spelling, since the auto-captions varied.]

Andi describes it as paying suppliers first and collecting from customers later. Small merchants, especially pharmacies, drugstores, and cosmetics retailers, often have to pay distributors on short terms, while most of their sales come through credit cards that settle later. He says Capital focuses on health and cosmetics because that mismatch is especially painful there.

Timing varies by market, according to Andi. He says that in the US, a merchant who takes a card payment typically receives the money in 2–3 days. In Brazil, he says settlement takes about 30 days, and he cites Argentina at up to 18 days. These are Andi's figures, not ours, and settlement terms can vary by processor and contract.

As Andi describes it, the model has 3 moving parts:

• The merchant side: Capital's software connects to the merchant's point-of-sale terminal and lets the merchant offer buy now, pay later installments (up to 12 payments) to its customers, without the merchant needing working capital to do so.
• The supplier side: When the merchant needs to restock, it can pay a distributor or manufacturer through Capital using its future receivables, in what Andi calls almost a 1-click payment instead of paying an invoice.
• The economics: Capital charges suppliers a transaction fee. Andi says suppliers accept it because they get paid faster than the 30, 60, or sometimes 90 days of a regular invoice, with less delinquency to manage.

Dan summarized it as a payment backed by future revenue, which lets a small business buy supplies now that will produce sales later. Andi agreed, and says friction exists all along the supply chain, since suppliers have their own suppliers. He says Capital has served more than 5,000 pharmacies and other retailers in Brazil.

Dan noted that merchant cash advances (MCAs) often carry very high effective costs, even though they deliver capital quickly. Andi added 2 other options and what he sees as their drawbacks: factoring receivables, which he says requires both the buyer and seller to have a good reputation, and working capital loans, which he says involve heavy bureaucracy at big banks. His pitch is that using receivables themselves as a payment method is an alternative to all 3.

He frames the broader problem with a statistic: he says World Bank and IFC data put the small business finance gap at over $5 trillion, nearly 20% of world GDP. We haven't independently verified that figure, but the World Bank's overview of SME finance is a good starting point if you want the source material. For a broader look at how financing choices can work for or against you, see How the Ultra-Wealthy Turn Debt Into a Strategic Asset.

One claim to treat carefully: Andi described the structure as having "risk zero" for the merchant. No financing arrangement is risk free, and costs can shift to other parties, such as suppliers who may price the fee into what they charge.

Andi says Capital has raised a $9 million credit facility and is targeting a larger seed round to scale in Brazil and bring the model to other supply chains and geographies. That's his plan, not an offer or solicitation of any kind. He expects more tailored finance for specific niches rather than 1 product for every business, and he imagines a future where receivables could be tokenized on a blockchain for faster, cheaper liquidity. That last idea is a forward-looking vision, and it carries regulatory and technology uncertainty.

He also describes how small owners tend to mix business and household finances. His father, a small business owner, used the company credit card for family expenses, and Andi says banks tend to treat the business and the owner as a single unit. We come back to that below.

A few highlights: he's a coffee drinker who tracks health data on his smartwatch, and he has a favorite Bukowski line ("find what you love and let it kill you") tattooed on him. His favorite business book is The Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen, about building 2-sided markets. His daily routine, which Dan shares, starts with the gym, and he says consistency beats any single hack. In 2018, while running Universia, he says his team set a Guinness World Record by holding the largest class ever, with over 5,000 students in a soccer stadium. His advice to his younger self: be ambitious, be bold, and be relentless.

It's easy to hear a story about a Brazilian fintech and file it under "not my business." Here's what we think business owners should take from it:

• A cash flow gap is not the same as a profit problem: A healthy business can still run short when it pays suppliers before it collects. That's a timing issue, and it recurs every cycle, which is why the cost of bridging it matters so much. We write about the personal side of lumpy income in Income Volatility Isn't a Bug, It's a Feature.

• The cost moves, it doesn't vanish: When a platform charges suppliers instead of merchants, someone still pays, whether through wholesale pricing, margins, or terms. Ask who bears the fee and how it may show up in your costs.

• Markets differ: Settlement speed, regulation, and consumer credit habits in Brazil are not the same as in the US, so a model that works well there may not translate directly.

• Owner finances and business finances are linked: Personal guarantees, household liquidity, and a business that holds most of your net worth all raise the stakes of how you finance a cash flow gap.

This is a hypothetical for illustration only, not a projection or a recommendation of any product. Say a founder owns a retail business that buys $120,000 of inventory a month. Suppliers want payment in 15 days, but card sales settle in 30 days, so on average the business needs to bridge about 15 days of purchases:

• Average gap: $120,000 ÷ 30 days × 15 days = $60,000.
• If bridged with an MCA at an assumed 1.3 factor rate: the business repays $78,000 on $60,000, an $18,000 cost (30%).
• Annualized view: if that is repaid over 6 months, the simple annualized cost is at least 60%, and the true effective rate is higher because the balance shrinks as it's repaid.

Because the gap recurs every month, the cost can repeat too. Some advances also carry personal guarantees, which means the owner's household balance sheet may be on the line. Terms vary widely by provider. [VERIFY] That's why we encourage owners to compare the total dollar cost, the annualized cost, and who is on the hook, not just the speed of funding.

We're a fee-only fiduciary, not a lender or a business credit advisor, and we don't recommend or endorse Capital or any financing provider. Our role is on the owner's side of the ledger: making sure the cash flow decisions the business makes don't put the owner's personal plan at risk.

In practice, that means separating personal and business liquidity (the issue Andi's father ran into) and sizing personal reserves using our Four Liquidity Bands: 0–2 / 3–5 / 6–10 / 10+ years. It also means building the portfolio backward from the life you want, an approach we call Life Driven Investing, so the business isn't the only source of your future. We revisit those decisions in our Quarterly Strategy Rhythm (a recurring review of cash flow, taxes, and equity), and for owners with substantial assets, our approach can look like a virtual family office. If financial stress is part of the picture, our video How High Earners Can Reduce Financial Stress FAST walks through where we start.

This conversation is most relevant to founders, business owners, and senior executives in their 40s–50s with $500K+ in household income whose wealth is tied to a business, especially one with inventory, long payment cycles, or financing needs. It's also useful for anyone who sits on the supplier side of those relationships or advises owners who do.

If most of your net worth is tied up in your business, we're happy to look at how your company's cash flow and your personal plan fit together. Book a free Wealth Strategy Call to walk through your hybrid retirement, equity, and tax situation. It's a conversation, not a sales pitch.