I think there's a great misconception about how Populous platform works. It is not offering invoice factoring or discounting, but rather a loan from the invoice "seller" to the the invoice "buyer", with the faint promise that the loan will be repaid once the invoice "seller" is paid by the ultimate customer. This makes no sense at all. In real factoring/discounting, the sale of the receivable transfers ownership of the receivable to the factor (i.e. the buyer of the invoice), and the factor obtains all of the rights associated with the receivables. Accordingly, the receivable becomes the factor's asset, and the factor obtains the right to receive the payments made by the customer for the invoice amount. In other words, the buyer of the invoice should be the one repaid directly by the ultimate customer, not the seller. Otherwise the seller is being paid twice for the same invoice (once by the invoice buyer and once by the customer); this goes against the very essence of what a factoring transaction is. It is also possible to structure a collateralized loan transaction that uses the invoices as collateral for the ultimate repayment of the loan, but that isn't what Populous is doing. In fact, the transaction that Populous is envisioning makes no sense at all.
The way you describe how Populous works is just wrong. It IS an actual sale of the invoice at a discounted price. I suggest you some more research on the process.
That said, it's a variation of invoice discounting and I'm not aware of any existing models that are similar, so you can't really make a direct comparison to traditional factoring or discounting. It'll compete in the same market, but it's not exactly the same type of business.
If it were indeed, as you say, a sale of the invoice at a discounted price, then why is the process described as follows on Populous's website (
https://populous.co/about-platform.html):
-Deposits must be exchanged to Pokens.
-Invoice buyer transfers Pokens to invoice seller.
-Invoice seller transfers Pokens to invoice buyer on repayment of invoice.
-Withdrawal of funds in government currencies, Bitcoin or Ethereum.It is pretty clear from the above that the invoice seller is the one who is ultimately repaid by the customer, which is the very antithesis of an invoice sale or factoring transaction. You can clearly see in the process above that the invoice seller gets paid twice, once by the invoice buyer (in Pokens) and once by the ultimate customer (in fiat). The reason real factoring transactions don't work like this is that they are structured in such a way as to avoid the moral hazard of seller non-compliance. In real factoring, when an invoice is sold, ownership of the invoice is transferred to the buyer, so that the buyer recovers directly from the customer. That is the very essence of factoring/invoice discounting.
This same process is explained in further detail on page 16-17 of the Feb 2017 Whitepaper
https://web.archive.org/web/20170606070843/http://populous.co/populous_whitepaper.pdf:
If the auction is successful:
1.6.9. The beneficiary of the auction receives the funds from the investor group, which has won the auction.
1.6.10. The investors from the other investor groups are refunded their bids.
1.6.11. When the borrower cashes the invoice, which he has auctioned, he sends the money to the platform.
1.6.12. When the funds are received, the investors from the investor group, which has won the auction, receive their winnings. Each investor receives dividends propor-tional to his bidding contributions.You can see clearly above that invoice "seller" is paid funds once by the investor group (paragraph 1.6.9.) and then a second time by the customer when the invoice is cashed out (paragraph 1.6.11.). From a functional perspective, this cannot be a "sale" of the invoice, because in such case the "seller" cannot be repaid directly by the customer, the right of repayment having been transferred to the buyer. Now, when you take away the right of direct repayment from the invoice "buyer", then this becomes nothing more than a simple loan, or an "IOU". There is no collateralization or other defensive mechanism protecting the invoice "buyer" from the seller's eventual non-compliance. In fact, there isn't even a way for the invoice "buyer" to know whether the invoice has been repaid/cashed out.
You should really be asking yourself whether it's a good idea to invest in a team that can't even properly explain how a factoring transaction works... perhaps this is because they have absolutely no experience in this field.
- Borrowers or invoice sellers sell their invoices at a discount depending on the risk credit rating calculated. So an invoice may be worth $1000 and the borrower may sell it for 10% less of it's value which is $900. This will rewarded the invested with $100 profit.
- If the borrower/invoice seller sells his invoices through Populous, they will receive Pokens from the sale which they can send to us and we will transfer them fiat currency equivalent or they can keep the Pokens and do what they want with them. The invoice seller can transfer Pokens outside the platform to his/her wallet or sell even sell on other exchanges. Pokens are worth the same as the fiat currency the inovice was sold in.
To offset the risk of default for any invoice sold by a invoice seller, There are three main things ppt do but this is on cases by case basis.
1) Credit insurance: Which is for large invoice amounts.
2) Charge on the invoice sellers company. Which is often known as a debenture registered a against the invoice sellers company.
3) Directors personal guarantee.
By taking out credit insurance the insurance company basically says they will cover the value of the invoice if the invoice sellers customer does not pay. A debenture will allow the assets of the invoice sellers company to be legal taken to settle the debt should the invoice not be paid. Directors personal guarantee would allow recovery of the debt in a worst case scenario by selling property of the invoice seller, such as his or her house.
These are used as recovery options and which are installed in the process of risk management of the invoice sale. Prior to that PPT carry our a full check on both the invoice seller and their customer in order to not get to the stage in which there would be a default.