U.K. P2P Invoice Broker MarketInvoice To Reach Into Europe

U.K.-based P2P trade-finance platform MarketInvoice is expanding into Europe and reaching out to retail investors, according to Global Trade Review.

MarketInvoice facilitates lending against invoices by letting businesses selectively auction their invoices to investors, who bid to provide capital against the unpaid bills. That gives businesses more flexibility, fewer restrictions and much quicker results than factoring or other conventional forms of trade finance.

The London-based company has set up more than £250 million in loans — £150 million just in 2014 — and in September opened a satellite office in Manchester, in northwestern England. But CEO Anil Stocker said on Tuesday (Oct. 7) that MarketInvoice is planning to expand “to new locations in the U.K. and in Europe.” The company is also “looking at new ideas and other short-term financing products.”

Stocker didn’t identify which countries MarketInvoice will expand into, or spell out how the company would deal with cross-border complexities.

But he said the company would also soon be opening up its platform to pension funds, asset managers and peer-to-peer specialist funds. “All these investors are very excited about providing finance directly to businesses, cutting out the banks and going straight to the source,” Stocker said.

The company also expanding into business services in July through a deal with e-accounting software company Xero, and plans more partnerships with other business software providers by the end of the year, he added.