Robert Clarkson, chief revenue officer at Payoneer, writes in the PYMNTS eBook “Baseline 2022: What the Next Six Months Holds” that FinTechs are giving small businesses the flexible tools they need to weather any downturn.

It’s certainly been an interesting 2022 so far, but as we learned with the global pandemic, there’s always room for the agile and innovative among us to deal with the inevitable surprises, not only to get through the headwinds, but to find growth opportunities.

For example, despite the terrible war in Ukraine, we’ve seen that thanks to their incredible resourcefulness and resilience, many Ukrainian small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have been able to keep going because of the portability of the value they bring to the world and the digital nature of global commerce. If you write code for customers in the U.S., you can do that from anywhere with a connection to the internet. If you’re translating marketing materials for companies in France, you can continue to get paid because your accounts are in the cloud, in the currency you prefer, not trapped in a physical branch.

For the millions of entrepreneurs and SMBs that we support around the world, one baseline that has changed is the need to prepare for a potential economic downturn. Given increases in the cost of capital and the drying up of easy cash, businesses across all verticals and of all sizes should be saving the capital they need to carry them through the next year or so.

We recognize that many of the world’s entrepreneurs, perhaps especially in the United States, have never experienced this particular set of economic challenges. But today, they have the help they need from FinTechs like many of us to ensure that they have world-class financial operating systems that will keep them growing.

One baseline we’d like to see change for U.S.-based SMBs is their willingness to look to overseas markets to grow. If you’re an Italian or Malaysian B2B business, it’s natural and prudent to look beyond borders for customers and suppliers. Yes, the U.S. is a huge market where growth opportunities still exist, but about three-quarters of world purchasing power and 95% of world consumers are located outside the United States. SMBs in the U.S. account for nearly 26% of all U.S. exports, but that’s with only 3% of these small businesses partaking in international trade.[1]  We recently found that 76% of our SMB customers were considering expansion into new foreign markets. We’d like to see more U.S. entrepreneurs in this category.

And with the digitalization of global commerce and innovations in moving money internationally, whether it’s over marketplaces or direct to consumers, American entrepreneurs have significant resources at their disposal. They have access to digital tools and platforms that give them access to new customers, partners, and suppliers. And they can partner with FinTechs that are uniquely positioned to help SMBs access capital and financial services that expand their businesses, including across borders.

The rest of 2022 is not going to be boring, that’s for sure. But entrepreneurs and SMBs are optimists by nature — as are those of us who help them grow. We need to continue to plan for the inevitable black swan events and for many, these are unprecedented times. We remain confident, however, that thanks to opportunities from the global digital economy, our industry and our customers will find ways to thrive together.