Populous is a global, peer-to-peer invoice trading platform using a blockchain protocol.
Populous aims to build a blockchain protocol support a sort of secondary invoice market to enable small- and medium-sized businesses to more efficiently invoice for services rendered. As fees and short-term loan costs for invoice payment processing grow, the Populous team plans to leverage the transparency of a distributed block chain ledger to improve the trail from service to invoice to payment with reduced costs via on-chain smart contracts. Populous also is creating their own in-house credit rating system using Exstensible Business Reporting Language and the Altman Z-Score Formula.
Populous believes increasingly secure, sophisticated smart contracts can facilitate less asymmetric service-payment exchange that currently imposes material costs on small businesses via three different actors: administrators, invoice sellers, and invoice buyers. Invoices are created by sellers, scored and either approved or denied by administrators, and made available to buyers if approved. After accepted by buyers, the invoiced services can be rendered and payment offered.