Market Invoice is a marketplace for investors to lend money to established small and medium sized businesses. The lending is done by buying unpaid invoices from businesses. This gives the business in question immediate access to funds and provides them with the cash flow they need to run their business. Banks are not lending even to great businesses and they are not paying investors a great return either so Market Invoice has spotted a niche thats come about since the credit crunch. I like this a lot because its proper capitalism at work. An industry thats blown up gets replaced by new operators coming into the arena.
Market Invoice checks out the companies selling invoices for you and rejects any that don’t pass their credit-worthyness tests. They also only accept invoices that are payable by blue chip companies. They make sure the debtor is happy with the invoice and all the information they have about the invoice and the companies in question is made available online to the auction bidders.
Anyway, I thought I would give it a try. Before I did I popped into see them and I met co-founders Anil Stocker and partner and director Ilya Kondrashov two young and very smart guys. My main question to them was how were they going ensure that the world of commerce became aware of them as I could see that investors with cash looking for a home would be an easy target. They agreed that getting a balance between investors and sellers of invoices would be key to their growth.
Since our meeting back in the beginning of November 2011 I have seen how they are utilising several business and social platforms for example by inviting along Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna to one of their events. I reckon these guys will soon be very well known indeed. I certainly wish I had thought of the idea.
Anyway my experience so far is that every time a new auction came up before I had any time to consider the facts the auction would be over in a matter of minutes. This happened several times and they were pretty hefty invoices at that. Obviously there are some big hitters on the site. Anyway I finally got a look in yesterday and am partly funding an invoice with another investor. To be honest that was what I was looking for , its always nice to be in the same boat as someone else! So lets see how it goes , I’ll be earning 1.5% a month which is a pretty tasty return but that shouldnt be for more than 60 days if all goes to plan.
Update on 21st Dec 2011.
Bought a number of invoices mostly fractions of invoices, all auctions over within minutes so you have to be quick. First 2 invoices have been paid back early which is nice but means I need to turn the money over faster to get the return. One bit of the website thats not very slick (yet) is the updating of the payment of invoices is not live.
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