Populous (PPT)

An Ethereum-based invoice and trade finance platform which uses smart contracts, a global standard for exchanging business information (XBRL) data and pegged stable tokens to create a trading environment for investors and invoice sellers to trade invoices

Whitepaper

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What is Populous

Applying for a business loan from the bank is not always an ideal solution for small and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs), especially for some businesses that require immediate funding for sudden working capital increases, wages and short-term investments which have not planned for. While large financial institutions and independent invoice finance companies dominate assetbased lending and factoring, Peer-To-Peer (P2P) invoice finance platforms have recently entered the industry. Similar to traditional invoice finance providers, these platforms provide solutions that allow SMEs to get immediate funding on monies owed to them by their customers, rather than waiting for customers to pay invoices within a 45 to 90 day period which usually causes a strain on the cash flow of the SMEs. With the continued rise of P2P lending platforms entering the industry, invoice finance marketplaces are becoming more accessible to businesses globally. The total market size for invoice finance has been growing rapidly and reached over $3 trillion USD worldwide. Not having a deep understanding of credit and underwriting expertise can cause serious financial losses for the P2P platform operators and investors on their platforms. General credit and underwriting experience in this industry are often not enough for building a successful and sustainable invoice factoring operation.

What we propose is an invoice factoring platform built using XBRL data to create a new type of credit risk system using credit scoring and bankruptcy formulas such as the Altman Z-Score which can be used to perform an in-depth credit risk analysis on targeted potential borrowers, linked companies, and their customers. While also providing targeted marketing solutions to find borrowers who need invoice finance using methods such as K-means cluster analysis, while also implementing the use of smart contracts on the platform, we can not only prevent duplicate invoice finance fraud but create a cost effective and efficient solution in operating a business with huge global potential.

Lately, it has become a common perception to a small few that the blockchain and XBRL data integration will play an important role in lending operations, regardless of whether the customer is an established enterprise, or SME with limited or no transaction history. Traditional Invoice finance providers will soon follow suit and try to utilize XBRL data for making credit decisions. We have proposed building a Peer 2 peer lending platform that leverages XBRL data, smart contracts and the blockchain as a solution to help automate whole processes within our invoice finance platform. However, despite the availability of sophisticated algorithms that aid credit decisionmaking for current invoice finance providers, reliance on "XBRL data" as an effective tool to assess credit risk is not fully there yet, but this is what we hope to change. Financial data is rarely available in the format needed to develop and perform in-depth credit risk and industry analysis.

Other sources of financial data providers such as Experian, Fame and Dun & Bradstreet do provide financial data but at a cost and anyone business considering carrying out analysis on the scale we propose using data hosted by such data providers, will find costs running into the hundreds of thousands of pounds. Thus while we are yet to see the emergence of such a platform as our own. It is still important to remember too that there is no real substitute for a stringent underwriting process, including importantly on-site due diligence of clients (e.g. verifying the physical existence of the business, meeting in person with the owner, and assessing the local business environment).