Proxtera & Silence Laboratories unveil Privacy-Preserving Cross-Border MSME Inference Engine

Encrypted computing solves another real-world problem in a cross-border setting. Proxtera, the global digital ecosystem enabling MSMEs to access cross-border finance and trade opportunities, has joined forces with Silence Laboratories, a deep-tech encrypted compute company building cryptographic solutions for privacy-preserving computation and collaboration, to launch a Privacy-Preserving MSME Engine. It would enable data exchange with consented organizations (by the MSME) to enable services to MSMEs in a manner that preserves privacy, obeying the sovereign data privacy laws of a country, under cross-border strict data regulations.

The solution streamlines and improves (time and accuracy) credit evaluation for micro small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) while ensuring the highest standards of privacy, compliance, and data security, using gurantees that raw financial data is never exposed to any party in plain text. Evaluators can only do computation on encrypted data.

Traditionally, when MSMEs seek financing from a new bank, underwriters must review detailed financial histories, often fragmented and spread across multiple jurisdictions. MSME financing today is slowed by costly, manual credit checks and the perception that small businesses are too risky. Banks often focus on large corporations with faster, lower-risk, and reasonable returns. For MSMEs, this means frequent rejection due to a lack of collateral or verification, being labeled risky even when viable, and ultimately struggling to secure the financing they need to grow.

Tackling a Long-Standing Challenge in Cross-Border MSME Lending

There is a pressing need for a solution that ties together customer consent, cross-border collaboration, elimination of trust gaps, compliance with privacy regulations, and localization principles, while also delivering faster, more cost-effective, and superior underwriting for lenders.

That is precisely where the solution built in partnership by Proxtera & Silence Laboratories comes into play. Powered by Silence Laboratories’ Cryptographic Computing Virtual Machine (CCVM), the system enables banks to collaborate through inference exchange, with financial insights computed securely in line with the MSME’s consent and in full adherence to privacy regulations. With no raw data movement and no exposure, underwriters gain the intelligence they need, while SMEs and their banks maintain complete control over sensitive information.

The solution also lowers the cost of lending to MSMEs by enabling lenders to generate inference on the verified and encrypted data directly from the banks, eliminating manual verification costs and raw data compliance risks.

“With our experience in Ghana, Rwanda and other emerging markets of the global south, we saw data privacy standards quite varied across the countries, and caused a hindrance in progressing the vision of enabling access to finance for MSMEs” said Saurav Bhattacharyya, CEO of Proxtera. He further added, “with the privacy preserving framework of Silence Laboratories, we enable privacy preserving computing on MSME data, thereby explicitly preserving privacy of the data, and following the highest threshold of data sovereignty laws.”

At a high level, the process is straightforward: an MSME applies for a loan through the Proxtera platform to its partner financing institutions and provides consent for inferences to be drawn from their financial data. Silence Laboratories’ Cryptographic Computing Virtual Machine (CCVM) then uses Multi-Party Computation (MPC) to run computations directly on the encrypted data, ensuring analysis is limited strictly to the consented terms. The lender receives only the inferences required for underwriting & no raw data is ever shared or moved.

Dr. Jay Prakash, CEO of Silence Laboratories, added: “This collaboration with Proxtera showcases how cutting-edge cryptography can solve real problems in global financial ecosystems. With our encrypted compute, cross-border lending can be powered by purpose-bound computation, ensuring no raw data movement while unlocking new financing opportunities for underserved MSMEs”

The solution has also been shortlisted for being presented at the G20 TechSprint 2025 during the G20 Summit 2025, and will be presented later this year in South Africa, highlighting its relevance in advancing privacy-preserving financial innovation globally.

About Proxtera

Proxtera was launched at the end of 2020 as the operationalization of the Business sans Borders (BSB) initiative by MAS and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA). Proxtera is creating the global open digital ecosystem of MSMEs (micro, small, and medium enterprises) with trusted credentials that help them gain access to trade opportunities and financial services for greater growth.

About Silence Laboratories

Silence Laboratories is a privacy-preserving computing company founded and run by cryptographers and PhDs with affiliations at MIT, UIUC, and NUS, alongside former leaders from VMware, Snap, A.T. Kearney, and Oracle. Currently, we serve some of the tier 1 banks, financial institutions, and data partners in the US and Asia through our cryptographic VMs.