Project description
New tool to automate small trading transactions
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) still struggle with slow, bureaucratic and expensive bank financing transactions for short-term loans. However, this is safer than most of the other available loan offers in the market but change is on the way. The EU-funded Invoice Exchange project will provide SMEs a new simple solution for their finances. Invoice Exchange is a real time, fully automated, online platform using external corporate data, which offers safety with processing of trading transactions. The platform is already part of a pilot programme in Slovenia. The project will conduct a market analysis for the Croatian and Polish markets.
Objective
Invoice Exchange marries positives of both, safe conventional banking and convenience of fin-tech paradigm. Conventional banking is slow and un-adjusted for fast processing of micro funding transactions. It takes minimum 2-3 weeks, significant amount of paperwork, and a high credit score for banks to approve a short-term loan or a factoring line for a SME. Also, banks keep interest rates on deposits at or below 0%, which results in businesses and creditors seeking alternatives for enriching their assets. On the other hand, existing peer-to-peer platforms offer none or very limited risk management for their creditors. This results in not fully exploited potential of acquiring creditors and in slower market uptake of such platforms.
Invoice Exchange is a fully automated and streamlined peer-to-peer invoice financing platform for businesses. Designed as an online factoring marketplace, the Invoice Exchange provides super-fast, on-line, on-demand funding with a click of a button for SMEs seeking working capital. And easy, efficient, low-risk alternative to short-term bank deposits for companies with surplus liquidity. Invoice exchange is a real-time trading and settlement system with integrated credit risk management engine that uses external corporate data to reduce creditors' risks. Invoices are sold with a click, pay-outs in 2 hours, companies are assessed in real-time. In last 3 years, Invoice Exchange has been gaining traction on a pilot market in Slovenia, resulting in 5-6% average yield on deposits, 100+ paying clients, 35 mio € transaction volume, and 350k revenue.
In the feasibility study, the company wants to perform in-depth market analysis for Polish and Croatian market, which are chosen as first internationalization targets. Also, product development requirements will be assessed, along with a thorough economic viability.
Total addressable market value in these three countries is 600+ mio EUR, and 15 mio EUR revenue is projected for the next 5 years.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
1000 LJUBLJANA
Slovenia
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.