Ethereum-Based Invoice Finance Platform Hive Raises Over US$8 Million

By Ray Crawford·25 August 2017·2 min read

Key Points

Hive Project successfully raised 2,087 BTC, or approximately $8.9 million, in its token offering from 2,234 investors.
The team plans to create the world's first blockchain-powered invoice financing p

Hive Project successfully raised 2,087 BTC, or approximately $8.9 million, in its token offering from 2,234 investors. The team plans to create the world's first blockchain-powered invoice financing platform. The underlying concept addresses a persistent challenge for businesses: converting unpaid invoices into usable cash. A typical invoice takes 30 to 90 days to collect from customers. Invoice factoring lets a company sell that invoice to a financial firm at a small discount, netting about 85% of the invoice amount immediately instead of waiting.

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Traditional banking has left smaller companies behind, creating a market gap. Hive's central mission: let SMEs tokenize their invoices on a blockchain and trade them as assets, giving access to capital that was previously exclusive to larger firms. The market recognizes the need for change. "For too long, SMEs have been left out in the cold by traditional lending systems which favor large companies," said Jure Soklic, co-founder and CEO. "The success of our token sale is testament to market recognition of the need to reshape the invoice finance industry and ease the burdens faced by SMEs worldwide by bridging the liquidity gap, while providing attractive investment opportunities for invoice buyers."

The technical foundation relies on Ethereum and smart contracts. The blockchain assigns each invoice a unique identifier. The platform publishes tokenized invoices to the chain as a shared pool of available assets for factoring. "With blockchain technology, every invoice is unique and can be assessed by a credit scoring algorithm, providing automatization and transparency to the whole invoice financing process," said Soklic. The HVN token grants holders access to invoice claims on the platform and credit ratings for companies with sufficient payment history on the Hive chain. Only the invoice creator or payment recipient can share financial information about themselves.

Soklic described the company's broader purpose: "We want to help small businesses solve their liquidity issues by leveraging blockchain technology to provide financing options previously only available to large companies." He added that the platform has potential to "dramatically streamline invoice issuance and settlement processes, optimizing small and medium-enterprises' ability to access liquidity for day-to-day operations and to finance expansion."

Looking ahead, Hive plans to build a full marketplace with analytics tools for peer-to-peer lending. The company targets launch before year-end.

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