Agridex International, the fintech innovator behind the Loam digital payments and treasury optimisation platform, has announced a strategic partnership with Tradeflow Capital Management, marking a significant step forward in deploying institutional capital in Kenya’s vibrant agricultural sector and other key regional and African markets.
The collaboration is designed to strengthen access to structured trade finance and modern payment infrastructure for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Kenya and across Africa.
By combining Tradeflow’s expertise in trade finance with Agridex’s Loam digital settlement platform, the partnership accelerates the flow of working capital to SMEs, reduces transaction costs and currency friction, improves transparency through near real-time visibility of funds, and addresses a long-standing gap in trade finance accessibility across emerging markets.
At the centre of this initiative is Loam, Agridex’s proprietary payments and treasury infrastructure, purpose-built to move capital efficiently across markets where legacy banking rails are slow, expensive, or inaccessible.
Loam delivers near-instant settlement with transaction costs below 0.2%, compared to traditional cross-border payments that often cost more than 3% and take several working days to complete. By reducing friction at the payments layer, Loam enables capital to reach businesses faster, with greater certainty and transparency.
Commenting on the partnership, Henry Duckworth, Founder and CEO of Agridex, said: “Loam was built to solve real payment and settlement challenges in emerging markets.
Tradeflow’s adoption of Loam as a core conduit for capital deployment demonstrates how modern payment rails can unlock scale, efficiency, and resilience in African trade finance.”
Under the partnership, Tradeflow Capital Management will use Loam as the foundational infrastructure for deploying structured trade finance capital into agricultural and commodity value chains across Africa. Having turned over US$5 billion in SME trade transactions since inception, Tradeflow brings deep expertise in asset-backed, data-driven financing models and real-time supply chain risk mitigation, enabling capital to be deployed in a disciplined and scalable manner.
The Agridex–Tradeflow partnership will initially focus on commodity trades and structured financing deployments across priority African markets, using Loam to deliver faster settlement, lower costs, and greater certainty of payment.
The initiative also aligns with broader efforts to strengthen Africa’s financial infrastructure. Imara Group, a long-standing investor and advisor in African financial services, has supported the development of institutional-grade payment and capital market infrastructure across the continent, investing over US$400 million over the past two decades. Its work has focused on expanding access to finance, enabling digital payments, and supporting platforms — including Agridex’s Loam — that underpin trade, employment, and economic growth.
As demand for efficient trade finance and cross-border payment solutions continues to grow, partnerships that combine capital, technology, and local market expertise are expected to play an increasingly important role in supporting Africa’s trade and economic development.
