Solving micro business late payments

英国有550万个体经营者和微型企业，占所有私营企业的99%，占所有雇员的60%。即使在大流行之前，微型企业平均等待56天才能获得付款，尽管它们的发票期限通常为30天或更短。据小型企业联合会称，这导致每年多达5万家企业倒闭。自2019冠状病毒病以来，领取工资的平均天数已跃升至71天，给这个陷入困境的行业带来了更大的压力。我们的研究表明，微型企业非常不愿意借款，但被迫采取回弹贷款，透支和增加信用卡债务，加剧了现有的延迟付款挑战。增加的债务现在是重点关注的领域，因为许多这些企业在正常情况下没有资格获得贷款，而且在服务和偿还债务方面可能面临重大挑战。促进催收以防止重大冲销当然符合政府的政策。我们的项目是专门帮助微型企业利用技术解决逾期付款的挑战。其核心是“选择”的基本原则。我们的目标是通过使我们的服务可以从任何地方访问，从而达到尽可能多的微型用户：个人或企业往来账户；2 .会计包；采用移动优先策略的支付类型，反映了时间有限的企业主随时随地访问的需求。在Covid之前，营运资金融资一直是解决延迟付款造成的流动性问题的切入点，但由于资产负债表上有额外的债务，重点需要转移到收取付款，营运资金融资只需要作为次要选择。我们的举措将扩大我们的收款服务，包括直接借记卡和银行卡支付，以帮助企业自动收款，并增加我们的销售和营销努力，在最短的时间内尽可能多地装载微型。对微型企业的好处将是明显可衡量的：我们将帮助micros减少收集时间。我们将确保个人往来账户持有人可以使用其现有账户进行个人交易业务，降低其经营成本。我们将确保每个微博都可以从任何银行账户会计包中获得我们的服务，并使用任何支付方式进行收款。

There are 5.5M sole traders and micro businesses in the UK making up 99% of all private companies and 60% of all employees. Even prior to the pandemic micros were waiting an average of 56 days to get paid even though their invoicing terms are typically 30 days or less. According to the Federation of Small Business, this causes up to 50,000 businesses to fail annually. Since Covid the average days to get paid has leapt to 71 putting even more pressure on this beleaguered sector.Our research has shown us that micros are very reluctant to borrow, but have been forced into taking bounce back loans, overdrafts and increased credit card debt, exacerbating the existing late payments challenge. Increased debt is now the key area of focus as many of those businesses would not have been eligible for loans under normal circumstances and are likely to have significant challenges in servicing them and paying them down. Facilitating collections to prevent significant write-offs will certainly be in line with government policy.Our project is to specifically help micros in solving the late payment challenge by utilising technology. At its core is the fundamental principle of "choice". We aim to reach as many micros as possible by making our service accessible from any:1. personal or business current account,2. accounting package, and3. payment typewith a mobile-first strategy reflecting the needs of time-poor business owners to have access from wherever and whenever they need to.Prior to Covid, working capital finance has been the entry point to solving the liquidity problem caused by late payments, but with extra debt on the balance sheet the emphasis needs to shift to collecting payments with working capital finance only needed as a secondary option.Our initiative will expand our collections service, Incom£ing, to include direct debit and card payments to help businesses automate their collections as well as increase our sales and marketing efforts to onboard as many micros as is possible in the shortest period of time.The benefits to micros will be clearly measurable:1. We will help micros reduce collection times.2. We will ensure that personal current account holders can use their existing account to run their sole trading business, reducing their operating costs.3. We will ensure that every micro has access to our service from any bank account accounting package, and collections using any payment type.