InvoiceFair, which specialises in working capital finance, has announced that over the last three months it has facilitated €30 million in funding for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) orders into Ireland to address the COVID-19 pandemic.

“InvoiceFair facilitated PPE suppliers with €14 million in finance for a large order of medical gowns that landed at Shannon Airport last week on board the world’s largest aircraft, the Antonov AN-225, as part of Ireland’s largest consignment of PPE in a single flight,” said CEO Helen Cahill.

Securing a manufacturing slot

PPE suppliers trade PPE contracts on the InvoiceFair platform to release vital funds to pay Chinese manufacturers upfront, a necessary conduit to securing a manufacturing slot, and ultimately deliver the consignment to the Health Service Executive (HSE).

InvoiceFair runs an innovative receivables trading platform to enable SMEs access fast and flexible working capital funding. The company, founded by Helen Cahill, Peter Brady, and Ivan Fox in 2015, is headquartered at NexusUCD, the Industry Partnership Centre at University College Dublin.

Since 2015, companies have traded more than €600 million of receivables such as purchase orders and invoices from state bodies and large corporates, on the InvoiceFair platform, to release unrestricted funds, without limitation due to debtor concentration or geography risk.

Helen Cahill

“InvoiceFair’s strength is structuring working capital solutions for SMEs, across all sectors, centred around them selling receivables, or approved invoices, and future receivables, such as purchase orders, contracts or recurring revenue, to a pool of institutional funders,” she added.

Receivables are traded daily on InvoiceFair’s platform where SMEs are connected to a pool of regulated institutional funders, primarily based in the UK. SMEs use the InvoiceFair platform to trade their receivables and finance up to 70% of the value of an approved invoice or purchase order and up to 90% of an invoice.

Maximum cost of credit

The total cost for the SME ranges between 1% and 3% of the traded amount, depending on various factors including the quality, time frame, and size of the deal. The SME sets a maximum cost of credit which is made up of a trading fee and the discount funders apply to a receivable to purchase a contract.

Cahill concluded: “There is a very limited range of funding solutions specifically addressing the working capital requirements of Ireland’s SMEs in 2020.

"The traditional lending model has a myriad of restrictions including facility limits, customer concentration limits, territory limits and often a requirement for credit insurance, which is an additional cost.

“Our market-based funding model puts control directly into the hands of the SME and enables them to leverage on their receivables when they need to release working capital, both to finance contracts and achieve sustainable business growth.”