Clear (previously ClearTax), an online taxation and fintech software provider, has entered the lending market with the launch of its invoice-discounting product for small and medium businesses (SMEs).
This comes at a time when the company is focusing heavily on foreign expansion, having raised $75 million from Stripe, a US-based payments powerhouse, and others in October of last year. According to a release, the company now plans to process $3 billion in merchant loans by FY’24.
As part of its effort to provide working capital solutions to suppliers and SMEs, the business plans to make its invoice discounting product available to its 3,000 existing enterprise customers.
“We have deep experience of building fintech SaaS for enterprises which has led us to solve for the burning need of tech-based solutions for SME credit and B2B (business-to-business) payments in the ecosystem. The tech-first supply chain financing products, starting with invoice discounting, will deliver outstanding experience for enterprises and their suppliers,” said Archit Gupta, founder and chief executive officer, Clear.
To operationalize supply chain credit for its invoice discounting solution, Clear has teamed with banks and electronic platform Trade Receivables Discounting System (TReDS).
“We are partnering with banks and NBFCs (non-banking finance companies) to operationalize supply chain credit at scale by enabling quick, efficiently priced credit based on actual business performance and not just asset ownership,” Gupta added.
Clear presently offers a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform to businesses that allows them to pay GST bills, create electronic invoices, and pay bills online. It also offers a consumer service called ‘BLACK,’ which lets people pay taxes and invest in mutual funds.
Clear claims that its software solutions are used by around 600,000 SMEs, and it processes over 200 million business invoices, giving it the underwriting capabilities it needs to expand its lending business.