Small businesses in food and beverage supply, packaging manufacture,
transport and cleaning supply have led a charge to Australia’s largest early
payment marketplace, with requests for over $50 million of early payments made
by SMEs in the 24 hours after COVID-19 was officially categorised as a pandemic
on 11 March. This represented a 650 per cent increase on its usual 24 hour request
volume.
The run has continued, with the platform – Earlytrade – receiving requests
for over $260 million in early payments from the 37,000 businesses that use it
in the last week.
“We’ve not seen transaction volumes spike like this before. Forget
toilet paper, everyone wants early payment,” Earlytrade co-founder and CEO,
Guy Saxelby, said.
“We have been working around the clock to facilitate these payments as
quickly as possible to help out small businesses across Australia. We’ve
currently processed over a quarter of a billion in requests, but more are
coming in every day.”
The platform has developed a product designed to release billions in
cashflow to small businesses and is in talks with policy makers and government
agencies, given the current social need for early payment to small businesses.
All invoices on Earlytrade platform are paid within 30 days, in line
with the timeframe recommended by the Australian Small Business Family
Enterprise Ombudsman (ASBFEO).
“It is not business as usual for us,” Saxelby said. “We believe faster
payment in these uncertain times is key to re-igniting the economy when we
emerge from this pandemic. We are trying to help the government use technology
to identify which parts of the supply chains need it the most.”
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