Trade finance and logistics

Freight and finance – why?

Freight and finance are merging.

Global trade is a huge market with significant financing needs. It is poorly served by legacy products from banks. We have a better product (see here) which is quicker, cheaper and simpler.

Moreover, our product is designed to be integrated by logistics companies into the digital customer journeys that they already provide.

What will the new customer journey look like?

One day very soon, an exporter will be able to log into the online portal provided by his shipper – whether that is a shipping line or a freight forwarder – and he will get trade finance.

Alongside his logistics documents and arrangements, he will be able to:

• See his credit dashboard, showing a real-time view of cash, documents, shipments and finance
• Ask for a credit limit on his customer (if he does not have one already)
• Use his credit limit by:
  • Uploading his commercial documents
  • Adding his logistics documents
  • Signing an agreement to get finance
• AND – he will receive money instead of paying money as his shipper takes away the box, converts into cash upfront and takes care of collection from the buyer.

This is coming to a logistics portal near you soon.

Is this better than what we have today?

Compare trade finance with the process of buying a car.

Today, when you buy a car, the finance is bundled into the car purchase. So this car is $49 per month, this other one might be $79 per month. The customer no longer sees the join.

Finance is being sold at the point of need in a convenient and understable package – where one financing arrangement is made that covers the sale, ownership, running costs and finally title transfer of the vehicle to the customer. Easy to do, easy to understand – overwhelmingly how it works today.

And freight can do the same thing.

Instead of shipping the box through one system and walking up the road to the bank – the exporter can do it all online, and in one place.

So what is the technology that allows this to happen?

The first step is the creation of a simple trade finance product at a low cost. PrimaDollar has achieved this – see here for more information about our export trade finance.

The second step is the integration – and this requires APIs, or “Application Programming Interfaces”.

APIs allow one system to talk to another in the background. By way of example, consider how a taxi-rental app knows what the traffic conditions are? The taxi-rental app has limited data on traffic – but google has it all. So the rental app calls a google API with your location and the taxi’s location and receives back the time your taxi will arrive. There is no magic and it happens fast, seamlessly and invisibly.

And that’s what we can do. See our Developer page [here] for how to embed trade finance into your customer journey.

Trade finance and ESG

Increasingly, trade finance facilities and supply chain finance will be linked to compliance with ESG standards in supply chains – which we natively support across our platform.

• Please see more about ESG: here.
• Please see more about our real-time ESG technology: here.

How can I find out more?

With a global network and global coverage, talk to us.

• Find your local office: here
• Read more about PrimaDollar: here