Tradeshift fires-up blockchain to address late payment problem

While the cryptocurrency world continues to swirl around in a daze of troughs and highs, startups are continuing to make use of the fundamental underlying strengths of blockchain technology.

A new entrant in this race is Tradeshift, a leading player in supply-chain payments and marketplaces, which is today launching its new service, which enables blockchain-based finance, or writing all transactions to a public ledger in order to create transparency and securing a record.

While this doesn’t involve the use of currencies like actual Bitcoin or Ethereum, “having the transactions on a public ledger ensures full transparency and the ability for companies to prove that they have legit transactions,” says CEO and co-founder Christian Lanng.

So what this all means is that Tradeshift’s cloud platform will bring supply-chain payments, supply-chain finance and blockchain-based early payments together into one unified end-to-end solution, called “Tradeshift Pay.”

They are aiming at a $9 trillion problem, which is the capital trapped in “accounts receivable” as a result of old-fashioned payment practices and the disconnection between large business buyers and their suppliers.

In other words, this could be a boon for small suppliers that find it hard to get paid when their invoices aren’t mapped to a ledger as strong as a blockchain.

With this single unified wallet, buyers can use several payment options, including virtual card payments of invoices and purchase orders, dynamic discounting, supply-chain finance through bank partners or blockchain-based payments.