Platform Black review: how good is it for raising invoice finance?

Over the past couple of years there has been a significant increase in peer-to-peer lending schemes. In the early days such schemes were focused on the personal and business loans sectors but, of late, they have come to the forefront of the highly competitive Invoice Finance market place. One of the major competitors to join this sector in 2011 were Platform Black that have rapidly built an enviable reputation for providing an innovative way of invoice financing for small and medium size enterprises (SME). However, before we conduct a Platform Black review let's just have a very quick refresher of the two most traditional invoice finance methods: - Invoice Discounting – Usually only available to established businesses with a minimum turnover of £500,000. All invoices have to be financed by the provider of invoice discounting potentially resulting in unnecessary charges being incurred, although fees tend to be low. The business maintains control over its debtors. Factoring – With a minimum turnover of around £50,000, smaller and/or newly established businesses can utilize factoring but they do not need to factor all their debtors. However, they do need to pass control of the factored debtors to the factoring company and the costs are higher than that of Invoice Discounting. So, you can see the advantages of both forms of invoice financing but we are sure that you would agree how potentially beneficial it would be to bring together the positive factors of both these methods and this we believe is what Platform Black have done. Platform Black's advantages are:

• The auction is available to businesses trading for a minimum of just 2 years.
• Your invoices are auctioned with a range of potential bidders thus potentially enabling you to obtain a larger initial amount with a smaller discount than through the previously mentioned traditional methods of invoice financing.
• You can auction as few as a single invoice thus keeping your expenses low.
• You can auction invoices from smaller credit worthy debtors not just "Blue Chip" companies.
• You retain control over your sales ledger so your debtors need never know about Platform Black.
• There is no fixed term contract; use the service as an when you require.
• The process is quick. Typical auctions last 3 days but there is also an option to get same day funding (although this costs a little more).
• After a one off lifetime membership fee of £1,000 plus VAT there is low transaction fee of only 1% of the invoice amount per 30 day auction (minimum £200).

If this Platform Black review has whetted your appetite you will no doubt want to find out more details about the scheme. In this respect, may we suggest that you contact us here at Choice Loans as we have been working closely with Platform Black for a considerable period of time introducing numerous clients to their auctions. To speak to one of our professional, experienced Advisors you can either telephone us on 0845 1260350 or complete our Invoice Finance enquiry form here.