Alibaba deal puts OP company — and KC — on the world fintech stage

Alibaba is the world’s biggest e-commerce company, generating $56.2 billion in revenue in 2019, and an Overland Park company now provides financial technology for its platform.

TreviPay Inc. creates electronic business-to-business payment platforms. The company worked with Alibaba to create a first-of-its kind B2B payment system called Alibaba.com Payment Terms that simplifies the process for buying foreign goods and services. Qualified buyers can order foreign goods and pay for them as much as 60 days after they are shipped.

Before this, buying goods overseas required going to a bank with foreign exchange capabilities and getting a letter of credit. Without that, payment for the entire purchase is required upfront, tying up working capital.

“You end up with a long lead time until the goods actually arrive and you can actually sell them yourself or finish production of whatever you’re making to sell,” TreviPay President Brandon Spear said. “So that has a pretty significant impact on the amount of working capital you have and how long it’s extended before you can get paid by your customers. It could be as long as 90 to 120 days before that happens. So often, smaller buyers have a lot of difficultly using services like this because it makes it inaccessible to them.”

….

Originally written by James Dornbrook  for the Kansas City Business Journal. Read more