Crowdz

Crowdz operates as a financial technology company with a platform designed to address the cash flow challenges faced by small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Founded in 2014 by Payson Johnston, who serves as the company's CEO, the firm aims to modernize trade finance. Johnston's background includes over two decades of experience in global supply chains and B2B technologies, which directly informs the company's mission. He previously managed global B2B systems for Cisco.

The company's core offering is the Crowdz Invoice Exchange, a global online marketplace where SMBs can sell their unpaid invoices to a network of funders. This process, known as invoice financing or factoring, provides businesses with immediate access to working capital, rather than waiting for the standard 30- to 120-day payment terms. The platform digitizes and automates the traditionally manual and cumbersome processes of invoice management and trade finance. By creating a competitive bidding environment among funders, the marketplace aims to secure favorable rates for the SMBs selling their invoices. Crowdz generates revenue by taking a percentage of the transaction value from the funders on its platform.

A key feature of the Crowdz platform is its proprietary Suplari score, which assesses the risk of invoice transactions, providing transparency for funders and helping SMBs build a trackable performance history. The company has also integrated blockchain technology to enhance the security and efficiency of transactions, creating an immutable ledger of invoice activities. Crowdz has secured significant funding to support its growth, including an investment from Citi and a partnership with Meta to provide invoice financing solutions to diverse-owned suppliers. The company targets the vast market of SMBs globally that experience cash flow gaps due to long payment cycles from their larger corporate customers.

Keywords: invoice financing, trade finance, SMB cash flow, fintech, invoice marketplace, working capital, supply chain finance, factoring, B2B payments, alternative lending