The first transactions have been completed on receivables finance company Polytrade’s newly launched technology platform, which works to link cryptocurrency investors to real-world trade finance assets.

The trio of deals, completed earlier this month, supported sales by Indian companies to buyers based in the UK, New Zealand and the US.

A spokesperson for Polytrade tells GTR each transaction was worth roughly US$60,000, while funding supported Indian exports in varying sectors, including fast-moving consumer goods to New Zealand, shoes to a UK-based apparel company, and engineering equipment to the US.

Polytrade, a decentralised lending platform geared towards receivables finance, has been built using technology provided by Polygon, a protocol which links together Ethereum-compatible blockchain networks.

Speaking to GTR late last year, Piyush Gupta, Polytrade founder and managing director, explained that the platform aims to help SMEs access affordable funding. On the borrower side, SMEs submit their invoices to the Polytrade platform, which also connects via APIs with all the third parties involved in a deal, including those that carry out KYC and credit checks.

There is a mechanism built into the platform ensuring that once all the data has been captured and uploaded to the blockchain, a smart contract will decide whether the invoice should be financed or not. If it is to be financed, the smart contract will also decide on the parameters of the deal, the size of the advanced ratio, the interest rate and the factoring fee.

Crypto investors will then be able to invest and earn interest on these real-world assets through stable coins, such as USDT or USDC. Their investments are protected by insurance, which the spokesperson says is being provided by AIG.

The spokesperson tells GTR the platform’s first lending pool, which the New Zealand, UK and US firms tapped into, was comprised of funding from retail investors, family offices, a single high-net worth individual, as well as hedge and alternative funds, such as venture capital firm Lio Factory, which is supplying 30 to 40% of the initial pool.

Meanwhile, Singapore-based SME invoice financing platform Volofin acted as Polytrade’s global distribution partner and originated the transactions. Currently, Polytrade needs such support for deals sourced outside of its main market, Asia.

Polytrade will now work on creating a new lending pool over the course of the next few weeks, the spokesperson adds.