Today we’re announcing a strategic partnership with Barclays Bank, which will see our invoice finance solutions become embedded into the bank’s product offering for its close to 1 million business customers. Alongside this, Barclays will take a minority stake in the company, and over time, will also put the weight of its balance sheet behind our platform to fund invoices directly.

I’ve always been interested to seek out collaborative partnerships that help entrepreneurs discover new ways of raising the finance they need to grow their operations and develop more products. It’s even better when we find partners that share our same DNA and values in helping businesses across the country.

Working with Barclays makes perfect sense to us. Their history of innovation spans 325 years, being the first bank to introduce credit cards and the ATM, and more recently the first to co-conduct the first blockchain-based trade-finance deal. It’s exciting for us to be combining their knowledge and footprint with our technology. We see this industry-first partnership with Barclays as a key milestone for fintech-bank collaboration, and only the start of the impact we can make together on the market.

Traditionally, banks have been set up to finance larger businesses. But it’s easy to forget that even the established companies of the FTSE 100 or 250 all started as small businesses with founders following a passion. At MarketInvoice, our digital-first approach means we can seamlessly handle a broad spectrum of companies from startups to scale-ups, anywhere in the country. With Barclays, we’ll get our solutions into the hands of more business owners faster.

I look forward to the months ahead as we start to activate the first customers through this Barclays partnership and catalyse further innovation across the bank. It’s the beginning of an exciting new chapter in our history.

Anil Stocker, CEO & Co-founder, MarketInvoice