I have bought three used cars on Ebay...Infiniti - good; Lexus - good; Jaguar - not so much.  Made the bid, paid the check and took a plane to Brooklyn, NY and a cross country return trip to Atlanta.  Probably, I rank in the top 1% of car buyers nationwide who have done this.  Maybe even in the world.  Why? 

Well...I see Ebay as the economist's fabled "perfect market".  I can get up to the minute pricing on hundreds of identical models, I can review at my leisure 50+ detailed pictures of the car, and I can get hundreds of testimonials from previous customers of a particular dealer.  Line up competitive financing, delivery, warranty etc.  I buy close to dealer price, so I know I can sell at anytime without being underwater.  In another example of Ebay's power, I know twenty-somethings who buy and sell fashionable clothing like yesterday's mutual fund, while saving themselves a fortune in "New Dealer" premium.

As a B2B CFO^® I find the process of raising funds for my clients can be quite tedious.  It is, in effect, a distinctly old-fashioned experience.  Just to get a simple line of credit can take weeks or months.  Little price visibility until you are on the "dealer's" floor, very hard to get multiple competitive bids, impossible to get customer testimonials, mountains of legwork and paperwork.  Hey, what if we could combine Ebay with business financing?

Well. last week I came across a web site called The Receivables Exchange.  As the name might suggest this is a site that allows a company to sell their receivables to a global network of institutional investors.  Within days, or even hours, it is possible to obtain receivable financing from multiple bidders, and select the best offer.  When you consider that typical remittance term can be 48 days, or as much as 180 days, this is a welcome financial tool for small and mid-sized businesses.

As a young accountant in the 1980s, I worked at Reuters in London putting together a new service called Money Dealing.  The service was to replace a fusty old phone network of currency dealers with an online exchange.  They said it couldn't be done, but once it opened the old way vanished and the market rapidly developed into a global, multi-billion dollar system.

The Receivables Exchange is another perfect example of a game-changing product, plugging small and medium local companies requiring working capital into the global financial system and pairing them with cash rich but investment-shy hedge funds, investment firms, insurance companies around the world.

For insight into your working capital needs and innovative ways to get cash, call David Kirkup - your B2B CFO^®  - on 770 845 6897.