We interviewed Grant Fraser, Global Head of eCommerce Financing, to find out how an eCommerce finance facility can support marketplace demand throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Watch the video or read the full interview below.
How are TradeBridge supporting eCommerce companies in light of COVID-19?
From our client’s perspective, never more have people been inclined to make purchases online. The government advice to consumers is to make purchases online rather than going in store.
Many sellers are very confident of the opportunity to sell more but they are struggling to buy enough stock to take advantage of the current opportunity due to working capital limitations. Our lending product is a good solution to allow merchants to buy more, whilst also being able to negotiate better prices with their suppliers by offering early payment discounts. This is likely to improve relationships between the merchants and the suppliers making them preferred buyers.
TradeBridge continue to onboard new clients and serve our existing ones – we are a technology led business and so the transition to working from the home environment has gone relatively smoothly. We have been having conversations with marketplaces across the globe, including companies in Europe, Asia and the USA. eCommerce is a growing market and the pandemic has accelerated this. We are definitely available to help support merchants with our financial products.
There are other financial providers out there that are pulling back from issuing loans to some markets because of what’s happening right now. There will equally be providers that are dependent on the credit appetite of third-party investors. Undoubtably, their appetite will be changing and becoming a lot more conservative.
At TradeBridge we have our own capital and benefit from a faster decision-making process because of this. We don’t have to go through any third-part discussions to issue the loans in the first place, we can make our own decisions. And we can make them fast.
We are also a technology enabled business. This technology allows us to ensure speed of payment to merchants. It also means we can continue to offer local payment solutions by providing capital in multiple currencies to ensure there is no delay in transaction processes.