Accelerated Payments expands into inventory finance with new subsidiary

Dublin-headquartered invoice finance provider Accelerated Payments is extending its reach further along the working capital cycle with the launch of a new inventory finance business.

AP Trade Finance (APTF), based in Miami, provides financing for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to purchase goods from international suppliers, taking the inventory in transit and at manufacturing sites as collateral. Led by Ernesto Vila, logistics professional and chairman of freight forwarder Tech Cargo, the subsidiary assumes full control and custody over the physical goods to provide financing against them.

APTF will initially focus on companies operating in the US, UK, Ireland and Canada as well as the north-south Americas trade corridor.

Accelerated Payments joins a growing number of working capital solutions providers – among them Taulia – in moving into the inventory finance space, which has seen demand soar as businesses build up buffer stock to protect against supply chain disruption.

“With APTF, we are now funding the initial part of a transaction, and alongside our existing invoice financing products we can now fund the end-to-end working capital cycle,” Ian Duffy, founder and CEO of Accelerated Payments tells GTR. ”In addition, from a financing perspective, we can be sure of our exit, which allows us to take what could be perceived as more risk in terms of buying inventory.”

In 2021, Accelerated Payments participated as asset originator in the world’s first trade finance-based non-fungible token transaction in a deal carried out by Tradeteq on the XDC blockchain network. Christoph Gugelmann, Tradeteq co-founder and CEO, told GTR at the time that repackaged assets into blockchain tokens for institutional investors to buy and sell would pave the way for an additional delivery mechanism of secondary liquidity for trade finance.

Duffy tells GTR that progress on funding the company’s book via crypto investors has “stalled” for now. However, the company, which has advanced more than US$1bn of invoice financing to over 350 clients across more than 40 countries since its inception, plans to continue to tap new funding sources to meet growing demand for working capital finance.

“We are in negotiations with a number of parties from a funding perspective for our senior debt book, and we are seeing some momentum back into the market now,” Duffy says. “Last year, the cryptocurrency world went through something of an upheaval, but there is a lot of capital there looking for a cash yielding asset class. We expect that in three to five years’ time, 20-25% of our funding will ultimately come from that sector.”