Populous (PPT) is a “bespoke invoice finance for businesses” platform that was founded in 2017 by Steve and Sam Williams. Essentially a business invoice platform, the founders wanted to free up the locked up funds in unpaid sales invoices by incentivizing the stakeholders on the platform. The platform has numerous products to this end.

The platform is primarily intended for business that have long payment terms with customers. Businesses in certain industries can go unpaid for extended periods of time because customers may default or take time to make a payment, affecting their own operation. Populous’ answer to this solution is to help bridge cashflow shortalls with attractive incentives.

There are three primary services that the Populous platform: Invoice financing, discounting and factoring. The highly customizable nature of the contracts, large advances, credit control functions and discounting features combined solved the funding of growth and short-term cash flow issues. 

Also worth mentioning is the platform’s auction mechanism. Anyone can buy or sell invoices, and the auction ends when the price for the invoice is matched within 24 hours, if it fails to meet the target in time, or if it is terminated early. 

Unfortunately, there isn’t much in the way of details about current development effort, and the details on what technical changes have occurred in 2019 are scarce. One notable change that has been communicated is the acceptance of fiat currency, specifically the dollar-backed USDCoin. The other significant development, which occurred early in the year, was the launch of the Invoice Platform, the first major product of the platform.