One of the earliest blockchain-based decentralised finance (DeFi) projects – invoicing financing platform Populous (PPT) – are days away from completing its first secured bond sale through U.K. regulated crowdfunding site Crowd for Angels.
Requiring a minimum investment of £100, the bond offers 6% interest per annum, payable quarterly over a 3 year period, and is secured by a third party holding PPT tokens to the value of twice the loan amount. Populous are currently half way to securing their total investment target of $100,000 with the pitch closing on 31 December 2019.
Cashflow Solutions
Following a $10 million initial coin offering (ICO) in 2017, Populous now provides a platform for business owners to sell their invoices to investors at a discounted rate, freeing up cashflow for the business and giving potentially attractive returns for the investor.
Populous took an equity stake in Crowd for Angels in October with the intention of issuing bonds to reach a larger audience and increase their liquidity pool.
According to Crowd for Angels, the digitalised asset backed crowd bond was initiated to enable Populous to “…further scale its business by allowing more SMEs to receive short term cashflow solutions.”
While the scaling of the business could have been achieved by Populous selling a portion of their PPT tokens on an exchange, Crowd for Angels explain that, “The CEO of Populous believes the tokens are worth much more than their current market value and therefore prefers to hold them.”
Populous recently went live with their PXP Business Intelligence platform which provides data on hundreds of thousands of businesses and uses eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) to extract key financial information from sources, such as company annual reports submitted to Companies House, to enhance credit risk checks.
