The National Bank of Ras Al-Khaimah (RAKBANK) today announced a strategic partnership with Invoice Bazaar, a FinTech Supply Chain Finance platform in the United Arab Emirates.
The partnership allows RAKBANK to participate as a ‘Receivable Purchaser’ on Supply Chain Finance transactions originated by Invoice Bazaar on its platform. RAKBANK is the first bank in the Middle East to have partnered with a Fintech Platform for enhancing the bank’s offering to the SME clientele.
“This partnership is significant to us as we move towards further digitizing our offering to our business clients. This opens up a new channel in SME lending.” said Peter England, CEO of RAKBANK. The bank is also seeking to broaden the partnership by exploring other synergies to bring in efficiency in bank’s invoice discounting portfolio.
Invoice Bazaar which has an in-house developed Supply Chain Finance platform, connects large buyers with SME suppliers that enables SME suppliers to avail early payment on their receivables. The liquidity towards early payments is provided by “Receivable Purchasers”. Invoice Bazaar has been successful in attracting institutional funds to provide liquidity and RAKBANK is the first bank to partner Invoice Bazaar. Invoice Bazaar, which started a year back boasts of zero losses in its portfolio and business presence in UAE, India and Singapore.
“We are extremely pleased to have RAKBANK as the 1st partner bank in our endeavour. RAKBANK is one of the most active and innovative banks in the region, and it was no surprise that they moved faster than any other bank to understand the synergies that exist. This association will help us attract global and local corporations to implement Supply Chain Program for their suppliers.” said Anand Nagaraj, Founder & CEO of Invoice Bazaar.
The first transaction under the partnership has already been completed. In the initial phase, five Supply Chain Finance programmes are under implementation.
Supply Chain Finance is a win-win concept that helps suppliers get paid early on their receivables from a bank/financier and at the same time ensuring the buyer to not reduce their DPO (Days Payable Outstanding). Most large global corporations have implemented Supply Chain Finance programmes and other corporates are slowly learning the benefits of implementing a program. Treasury Managers in public listed companies are quick to implement such programs, as they understand the balance sheet benefit a Supply Chain Finance program can bring.