It has been a while since I made a video covering a project that is up and running so allow me to get back to my roots and let’s explore Populous and how it is disrupting financial institutions and allowing its users to make a profit.
Populous is a platform that enables its users to take part in bidding on invoices.
Typically the situation goes like this:
A company provides goods or services and then sends its customers an invoice to collect payment for those goods or services, allowing the customer a timeframe that often lasts 45 to 90 days to provide payment.
These invoices can often lead companies to experience hold ups of their cashflow which can hinder the progress of their business.
Normally big banks and financial institutions step in to purchase these invoices at a discount in the form of a loan to businesses needing cash. Because they have somewhat of a monopoly on this market the banks can make pretty good money especially if they are loaning to larger businesses.
This is when Populous steps in and opens the door for its users to have the ability to bid on invoices.
The auction means that the companies needing cash will receive competitive funding for their invoices and those bidding for invoices can earn a passive income from the discount and their profit comes when the customers pay the full priced invoice.
Because Populous is a decentralized cryptocurrency-based platform, users and companies from all over the globe can come together to have their needs met.
No longer are the companies subjected to the parameters set out by banks, and for the first time, people like you and I can participate in a massive marketplace and earn a profit that was otherwise limited to wealthy financial institutions.
Populous uses XBRL which is Extensible Business Reporting Language to analyze the actual credit risk of the invoices.
This uses information regarding the financial state of the business and the debtor to determine the risk of bidding on an invoice.
Also, on the platform they have developed their own in-house credit rating system that saves the time and money of referencing and relying on external credit agencies.
As a business, if your invoice is approved to be up for auction there will be a 24 hour window for bids. After that window is closed, you’ll learn if any bids have met the sales goal. If none have done so you can either choose the highest bidder, cancel the auction or restart the auction again.
The payments of these bids will be in the platforms token called, Pokens.
Right now the platform is currently in its beta phase, this means that all users of the platform are doing so to test out the software. Also, this means that all payments and settlements are done using “test pokens.” Do not deposit real pokens or fiat currencies onto this test platform just yet. They’ve just recently released their beta version 2 with some updates so if you’re interested in checking out this platform and help it to work out its bugs and provide feedback before it’s ready to go live, now is a good time.