“Shift then takes payment from the client without any risk for the hardware store.”
Forced into banker role
With an onboarding process that takes a matter of minutes, Shift looks at a registrant’s accounts in real time and can pay out suppliers to a maximum of $500,000 the same day.
Jamie Osborn, CEO at Shift, says the service is unique in this space, providing a fix for cash-strapped businesses that are “effectively acting as lenders to business.”
“There was just no intermediary in that market,” Osborn says. “It was businesses trading with each other and suppliers acting almost as a bank for the buyer. It struck us as unusual,” says Osborn.
“If you actually totalled up all those receivables, the SMEs themselves are the fifth largest bank in the country. Their core competency isn’t underwriting, it’s not sizing limits, it’s not collecting payments.
“It’s none of those things and yet they’re forced into this…
