Momentus Capital: Using data, design, and capital to close the gap for small businesses
Momentus Capital is a family of organizations focused on transforming how capital and investments flow into communities, with a goal of providing access to opportunities for local leaders and entrepreneurs.
How Momentus Capital supports small businesses in the United States
- Small businesses — and the lenders who serve them — are navigating a constrained capital environment. While high interest rates limit entrepreneurs’ access to funding, mission-driven lenders face barriers to scale, from structural limitations to perceived risk in capital markets.
- Momentus Capital is working to shift those dynamics. Formed through a strategic alignment between CDC Small Business Finance and Capital Impact Partners, Momentus Capital blends decades of experience to support both small business borrowers and community-focused lenders. By rethinking risk and testing new capitalization tools, they're helping build a more sustainable and inclusive small business finance ecosystem.
Program overview
Our work together
With support from Mastercard Strive USA, Momentus Capital is building on past success to launch Activate 2.0 and support Momentus Securities, part of the Momentus Capital branded family of organizations, to design a new securitization mechanism for small business loans — unlocking capital where it’s needed most.
- Activate 2.0 expands on the pilot launch of a lending model that challenges traditional assumptions about risk and creditworthiness. With Mastercard Strive USA’s support, Momentus will continue to explore ways to use technology and data to enhance our product offerings, improve impact, and stabilize operations with a dedicated loan loss reserve. The goal: a scalable model to expand into new markets in alignment with Small Business Loan Guarantee Programs.
- Momentus Securities, an SEC-registered broker-dealer, MSRB-registered, and FINRA/SIPC member, connects mission-driven lenders to the capital markets, generating both financial returns and social impact. With Mastercard Strive USA’s support, Momentus Securities is developing the legal and financial infrastructure to support a secondary market for non-SBA loans. This breakthrough could open up new capital pathways for mission-driven lenders and bring long-term sustainability to the field.
Together, these initiatives aim to demonstrate what is possible when the rules of lending are rewritten to support the work that community-focused lenders provide to expand small business efforts nationwide.
Become a partner
Interested in being a partner for change?
Together we can empower millions of small businesses globally with innovative digital solutions that boost resilience, growth, and inclusion. Your organization's expertise can help bring impactful programs to scale, deepen local reach, and create meaningful change in the small business ecosystem. Be part of a vibrant partner community driving real economic impact.
Shelli Hayman
Small Business Entrepreneurs are the engines of job creation and economic activity in communities across the country. To support their efforts, we must continue to innovate across the entire small business lending ecosystem. This includes both launching new lending products and how we can support lenders themselves. We are excited to have partners like Mastercard Strive USA, who share this vision and provide the financial support required to turn these ideas into reality.
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