By Ben Rooney - Wall Street Journal
Danish social invoicing company Tradeshift is launching a service that will allow small customers to get immediate payment for their invoices and not be limited to the terms imposed on them by their customers.
If a supplier submits an invoice for payment through Tradeshift and that invoice is accepted for payment by the customer, then the supplier can, for a fee, redeem the invoice early. Christian Lanng, Tradeshift CEO said Instant Payment would be rolled out shortly. It is currently in beta.
Tradeshift, based in Copenhagen and launched in 2010, offers free e-invoicing.
Instant Payment service is a variation on conventional factoring, but Mr. Lanng says there are differences, essentially the rate of interest that they are able to charge. With access to a rich supply of data, Tradeshift is able to offer a per-deal interest rate, rather than a flat rate for all transactions.
And unlike invoice discounting, which relies on the credit rating of the supplier, Tradeshift’s instant payments leverages the credit rating of the customer.
Mr. Lanng said it was another example of big data. “We are using big data to crunch this real time. We can create a whole new way of doing credit. more from the Wall Street Journal
