This year’s Working Capital Startup award goes to Afakto, an inventive softwareS-as-a-service (SaaS) provider whose intelligent platform accelerates, simplifies and de-risks factoring by centralising, automating and optimising the entire process. Judges were won over by the company’s genuinely impactful technology – which can cut operational costs by up to 50% in just one year – and its huge growth potential.
Manual and opaque factoring processes
As small and medium-sized enterprises struggle with rising late payments and difficulties accessing credit, many face a cashflow crunch. Receivables finance represents a vital lifeline, but manual, disjointed and opaque processes mean factoring can be operationally cumbersome and complex to manage.
This can raise costs, reduce the speed at which suppliers access liquidity or even deter buying companies from developing programmes.
Integration and automation
Afakto was launched in September 2024 to offer a smoother solution. It developed a smart SaaS platform that acts a central hub for participants in factoring programmes. This allows financing companies, credit insurers and corporates’ enterprise resource planning (ERF) systems to interact in real time, giving them full visibility and control over their factoring programmes.
Judges were most impressed by the seamless integration offered by Afakto’s platform, which helps reduce the IT burden on programme participants. By connecting with the IT systems of corporates, credit insurers and funders via application programming interfaces (APIs) or secure file transfer protocol (SFTP), the platform allows them to share data instantaneously with full traceability.
To eliminate manual work, reduce errors and free up time, Afakto also automates every step of the factoring process, from the initial financing request to the extraction of receivables and customer data from ERPs to transaction reconciliation and reporting. This turns what used to be clunky, fragmented processes into streamlined, data-enabled workflows.
Real-time visibility and risk control
Afakto also helps participants better monitor their performance and costs. By connecting every link in the factoring chain and providing synchronised reports and data analysis, the platform allows users to have single, centralised and clear view over all their factoring programmes.
The same abilities also help banks and their clients reduce risk and boost compliance. For example, rapid data sharing ensures accurate payment tracking and discrepancy detection. And communication with insurers allows credit limits to be easily monitored and auto-adjusted.
All of the above translates into potential efficiency gains that really grabbed judges’ attention. Afakto says that its platform can cut the manual effort associated with factoring programmes by up to 90% and reduce operational costs by 50% in the first year of use.
Faster onboarding and financing
Importantly, the platform’s capabilities also deliver real-world benefits to suppliers. They can be integrated and onboarded to the system at top speed – often within just 48 hours. And because factoring is now faster, smarter and more efficient, they can access reliable, affordable liquidity exactly when they need it.
This improves SMEs’ financial resilience, reduces the impact of payment delays and enables them to grow their business.
Scalable architecture and support
Afakto’s growth potential also impressed judges. The platform’s technology architecture and SaaS model make it easily scalable. This will enable banks to expand their factoring services and manage a growing number of clients and transactions easily and efficiently, helping ensure more buyers and suppliers can benefit from working capital finance.
And the company’s strong focus on customer service won it extra points. It offers hands-on education and support to help corporates and funders master the solution and get the best from their factoring programmes.
“Afakto’s groundbreaking technology offers practical solutions for some of the most stubborn challenges facing factoring. And barely a year into its existence, the company is developing a reputation as a genuine pioneer in this space,” said Mike Hewitt, CEO of Working Capital Forum. “We look forward to watching Afakto’s growth and seeing where they take working capital management next.”