Today we will consider a very interesting and important project PayBlock. So let's start.
Small and Mid-sized Businesses (SMB) are heavily affected by the impact of lengthy credit terms upon sale, with traditional financial products failing to cater to them. This leaves SMBs with few options when looking to alleviate cash-flow problems. Having identified this problem, InstaSupply is introducing PayBlok, a token aimed at solving SMB cash-flow problems. The business-to-business (B2B) payments landscape totaled $18.5 trillion for 2016 in the United States alone, and relies heavily on credit (42-48% in most countries, according to Atradius Collection). Typically, SMBs lack the resources to run best practice administrative tasks focused on payment and collection. Further to this, they are in a weaker position to negotiate payment terms with their suppliers. These two factors result in SMBs depending on credit to survive; a dependence that is exacerbated by the fact that half of all sales on credit failed to be paid on their due date, creating demand for even more credit. Despite this, banks have failed to offer any accessible solution for SMBs. With this in mind, InstaSupply are looking to further increase their support for SMBs by offering an early payment function on top of their existing platform—which connects buyers and suppliers matching purchase orders, deliveries, and invoices. This will enable provision of de-risked financial products to SMBs. There are already 2000+ companies using InstaSupply every month, with the volume of transactions exceeding $60 million per year. The new early payment function will enable hosting of over $200m of transactions in the first year of deployment.
InstaSupply was founded in late 2014 by Lee Pruitt and Tim Huegdon with the vision to simplify all buyer and supplier business interactions online; born out of their prior experiences. InstaSupply have spent time building and refining a robust workflow that captures, digitizes, and automates all the back-and-forth interactions that proceed payment. Whilst disruption of the problems in business related to ordering, delivering, invoicing, and accounting have been a key focus, managing payments has always been the company end game since inception. Funded through rounds of investor financing since formation, the company has built a team of deeply experienced professionals who develop the platform, onboard and sustain thousands of businesses, and have processed over $60 million in transactional value.
Before addressing the pain of payments faced by small businesses, it is important to first understand the business-tobusiness (B2B) payment process and how that differentiates from other payment processes: When a consumer pays a business, one entity is the sender and the other the receiver. In B2B payments, businesses constantly manage both the send and receive sides of the equation.
This back-and-forth cycle is commonly referred to as the purchase-to-pay process for a buyer, and the orderto-cash process for the supplier. This process spans days—sometimes months—before it is completed. The efficiency of these processes has a direct effect on a company’s cash position. In general accounting, the symmetry of this interaction is that one company’s payable is always another company’s receivable.
InstaSupply provides a workflow for buyers and suppliers to manage their payments and collections. With over 2,000 businesses currently using the platform, over $60 million worth of invoices are passed through InstaSupply on an annual basis. By creating a business network between buyers and suppliers, the platform collects data from both sides. InstaSupply empowers users to create and place purchase orders, track deliveries, and match orders to corresponding invoices; this enables buyers to track, manage, and control their spend. Upon receiving an invoice, customers on the platform are able to review the invoice, and accept or reject it accordingly. Once the invoice has been accepted, invoices are paid outside the InstaSupply platform. Because the data is pushed to the customer's accounting software for record keeping and eventual payments, the customer is required to manually record when an invoice has been paid on the InstaSupply platform.
The additional steps of moving data between systems creates extra workload for finance departments; increasing the likelihood of human error, creating open space for fraud, and also delaying payments to suppliers. This is a great advantage of this project.
PayBlok is a crypto-asset (token) that gives its owners/holders exclusive benefits on the InstaSupply platform. It will be developed under the ERC20 Token Standard.
As an asset, the initial sale of tokens will be subject to sales taxes according to the market where it is sold. Following this, a token belongs to its owner and can be traded without restriction or the need for consent or participation from InstaSupply.
The creation of the PayBlok token enables InstaSupply to offer a range of products solving the problems faced by SMBs as outlined in section 3 (“SMB Problems”).
These products are:
• Integrated Payment Solution
• Supply Chain Financing
• Asset-Based Lending
One important element of our solution is the creation of a community of participants that can contribute and get rewarded for their work - profit sharing. Every group that is part of the community has a key role to the overall success of the network.
The diagram above describes InstaSupply’s end-to-end solution from the Purchase Order to the settlement of a financed invoice.
Roadmap
May, 2018
• Begin marketing PayBlok and the subsequent new features within the InstaSupply platform.
June, 2018
• Begin pre-sale of PayBlok tokens to key individuals and early registrants.
July, 2018
• Open main sale of PayBlok tokens.
Q2, 2018
• Begin application for regulation and compliance in order to be a fully regulated global business bank and lender.
• Begin applications for inclusion of PayBlok on third-party token exchanges.
• Upgrade InstaSupply architecture to support full payments.
H2, 2018
• Build out of InstaSupply team to develop, support, market, and sell the extended product.
• On-going development of new features.
Q1, 2019
• Deliver integrated payment gateway for receipt and delivery of fiat currency between buyers and suppliers.
• Deliver PayBlok wallets in the InstaSupply platform.
• Provide full in-platform payment runs.
Q2, 2019
• Provide transfer-in of PayBlok tokens to InstaSupply wallets.
• Start providing PayBlok rewards to buyers and suppliers.
Q3, 2019
• Provide purchase of PayBlok within the InstaSupply platform.
• Provide Supply Chain Financing and Asset-based Lending
Q4, 2019
• Provide transfer-out of PayBlok from InstaSupply wallets.
• Provide cash-out of PayBlok tokens within InstaSupply.
2020 and beyond
• Further development of the PayBlok token as a reward within InstaSupply.
• Delivery of more regulated financial services for businesses.
Team
In the future, more and more companies will need cloud platforms that allow enterprises to track and control expenses between suppliers. The project has a good and experienced team. In the future, blockchain technology will develop and have demand. I think they will be able to achieve their goals.
WEBSITE: https://payblok.instasupply.com/
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/instasupply
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/instasupply
WHITE PAPER: https://assets.ctfassets.net/5vuk877t9hxd/3NAfrZaazmEk6emsaikqiW/87fb62e129789d978720d85d56c49e0e/payblok_whitepaper.pdf
Writer's bountyox username: sherifcrypto
ETH address: 0xB7d6ea78550d078a387dc44B2F5Cf68Ead35Df86
"This article was created in exchange for a potential token reward through Bounty0x"
