Sage Links French SMEs To Fast Financing

Sage is gearing up for a busy year ahead after showing a favorable financial performance for FY 2016 and announcing plans to make some strategic investments in 2017.

But the latest offering from the cloud accounting company comes before the new year. The firm revealed Tuesday (Dec. 6) that it is rolling out Clic&Cash, a way for Sage’s SME users to access working capital financing.

Through a collaboration with French alternative lender Finexkap Group, Sage can directly link its users to short-term finance. According to the companies, the solution is available to Sage users in France.

Late payments and cash flow problems are a major challenge for French businesses, the firms said in their announcement, leading many SMEs to fail. Funds from Finexkap requested via the Sage interface can land in businesses’ accounts in less than 48 hours, according to the companies.

“Having credit trapped between businesses is a systemic problem, which significantly changes the health of French businesses and the economy in general,” said Sage Director of Product Marketing Claude Cordier in a statement. “We think that digital technologies will succeed in that area, where regulation has reached its limits. Real-time analysis of data allows for a calculation of risk, which is fairer and gives a boon to the availability of short-term financing at a competitive cost.”

He also highlighted the ease of use of the Clic&Cash solution, as well as the speed at which companies can access the funding.

“Our partnership with Sage is built out of the heart of our strategy of ‘network lending,’ the purpose of which is to connect our service to software that combines information relating to credit held between companies, notably commercial management and accounting software,” explained Finexkap in another statement. “Thanks to the strength of Sage, the market leader in business management software, several hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses will now benefit from financing at a click in order to meet their cash flow problems.”