Cómo una tecnología brasileña está resolviendo la crisis de crédito en el sector de equipos médicos

Brazil is going through a silent crisis that rarely makes economic headlines, but affects millions of small and medium-sized entrepreneurs every day: the difficulty of commercial credit for businesses that cannot offer traditional collateral. According to Serasa Experian, the country closed 2025 with more than 74 million individuals with negative credit registrations and a record number of CNPJs with restrictions. In that scenario, a dental surgeon who wants to expand a clinic, an esthetician who wants to grow her services, or an entrepreneur opening an aesthetics business simply cannot access the equipment she needs.

Banks require real collateral most people do not have. Suppliers demand guarantors or security checks that fall outside the budget. Financing companies offer rates that make the investment unviable. The result is a large market of qualified professionals left out — while manufacturers and distributors watch inventory sit idle and growth stall.

It was against this backdrop that, throughout 2025, I developed a proprietary technology that attacks the problem at its root. Not from the credit side — which the traditional financial system has already tried exhaustively — but from technical control of the asset itself. The solution, implemented by oLaserTech in its laser hair-removal line starting in the last quarter of 2025, changed the company's commercial metrics and is being applied in other contexts of the sector.

Results observed on oLaserTech OL-700 equipment after the technology was deployed in the last quarter of 2025 (baseline: first six months of operation under the new system).

The problem: a large market outside of credit

The medical and aesthetic equipment sector moves billions of reais a year in Brazil, but operates under a structural limit: the devices are high-unit-value goods, and most potential buyers — small clinics, self-employed professionals, people just starting out — cannot pay cash or offer enough bank collateral for traditional installment plans.

In practice, the manufacturer or distributor faces three poor options: sell only to those who pay cash and shrink the market; sell on terms without collateral and absorb historically high delinquency; or outsource credit to banks and finance companies, making the equipment more expensive for the end customer.

In research I conducted with ten aesthetic-equipment distributors in Brazil's Southeast and Central-West in the first half of 2025, a consistent pattern appeared: on average, 45% of commercially viable proposals were dropped because the customer could not provide the required collateral. For every 100 professionals who wanted quality equipment, 45 gave up or turned to worse alternatives.

The loss is threefold. The entrepreneur does not work, or works with inadequate equipment. The manufacturer does not sell. The end patient or client is often served in suboptimal conditions.

"Brazil doesn't have a demand crisis for medical equipment. It has a collateral crisis. Whoever solves that won't just sell more — they'll unlock an entire market."
— André Roriz

The insight: the equipment itself as collateral

The question that guided development was simple: what if the rented or financed asset itself functioned as the guarantee? Instead of guarantors, security checks and repossession proceedings, the manufacturer could condition use of the device on payments being current.

The solution I developed, deployed on oLaserTech OL-700 equipment from the last quarter of 2025, answers that without turning the clinic into a park of extra accessories. Payment stops being a future promise subject to collection and becomes a condition of operation. A current customer operates. A customer in arrears does not generate revenue with that equipment — and because revenue depends on the machine working, the incentive to stay current changes in nature.

What the technology is — and what it is not

The solution uses 256-bit cryptography to protect access control to the equipment. Implementation details are proprietary and are omitted here on purpose: the value is in the commercial application, not in exposing the architecture.

From a regulatory standpoint, one point needs to be explicit. The technology does not install any additional radiofrequency-emitting device or GPS locator. There is no extra tracking, radio or geolocation module attached to the equipment. For that reason, the solution is not conditioned on Inmetro and Anvisa regulation applicable to that kind of accessory — which simplifies deployment in the manufacturer's operation and in the clinic's day-to-day work.

Positioning of the solution deployed on oLaserTech OL-700 equipment: strong cryptography, with no additional radio or tracking hardware.

The results: from 55% to 93% payment compliance

Before the technology, oLaserTech operated a mixed model of cash sales and traditional installment financing, with average compliance of 55%, long collection cycles, high renegotiation cost and relevant losses.

In the first six months under the new system, the base reached 93% compliance — 38 percentage points higher. The 7% that still appear as “unpaid” in a given month, in practice, concentrate customers who temporarily suspended use (vacation, renovation, seasonality) and tend to resume payment when they return to operating.

In treasury, the receivables cycle shortened, collection cost fell and cash-flow predictability rose. The operation moved closer to a recurring-revenue model, with structural retention.

The result I find most significant, however, is not only in cash. It is in who gained access to the equipment. In the six months after deployment, oLaserTech enabled dozens of professionals who, under the previous model, would have been rejected on credit: dental surgeons early in their careers, estheticians opening their own businesses, professionals in small cities where traditional finance would not operate. In this case, technology returns the means of production to people who already have the skill to work.

Why this matters for Brazil

What is new is not the existence of cryptography — strong cryptographic mechanisms have existed for decades. What matters is the application: using that layer to unlock a structural problem in the Brazilian equipment market, opening access for people left out of credit and giving the manufacturer a sustainable commercial model.

The same kind of barrier appears in other durable goods of medium and high unit value sold on terms or rented. When a professional can start her own business without a guarantor, she generates income, hires, pays tax and moves the local economy. When a Brazilian manufacturer sells more because commercial risk became manageable, it invests, hires and depends less on imported models that do not understand this reality.

The solution was developed in Brazil, for a characteristically Brazilian problem. In a country that often imports off-the-shelf technology from markets unlike ours, building a local tool for local friction is a value in itself.

"We are not selling cryptography. We are selling access — access to equipment, access to the market, access to a career. The cryptography is just the instrument."
— André Roriz

Conclusion

Banks and finance companies spent decades trying to solve the problem from the risk-assessment side. The approach here is different: the asset itself supports the commercial relationship, with 256-bit cryptography and without a radio or GPS accessory that would subject the operation to Inmetro and Anvisa in that scope.

This is the kind of contribution I believe in. Technology applied to a real problem, with a clear impact metric, and benefit for the customer, the manufacturer and the person at the point of care.

If you manufacture equipment and face the same commercial deadlock, or want to talk about alternative guarantee models, my contact is on the site.