Clearco and Boundless Team to Expand Working Capital for eCommerce Merchants

eCommerce invoice funding firm Clearco has teamed with small-business-focused capital marketplace Boundless.

The partnership, announced Tuesday (July 16), is designed to provide working capital to eCommerce brands, with Clearco offering businesses outside their core target direct access to Boundless’ marketplace, and Boundless connecting eCommerce brands to Clearco to access funding in 24 hours.

“eCommerce brands, especially small-and-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), struggle to source traditional means of financing or lending for their business,” the companies said in a news release.

“Alternative working capital or funding providers are necessary to support this emerging, high-growth sector of the United States’ economy. Clearco not only offers such businesses this critical funding but does so without requiring collateral or personal guarantees or diluting founders’ ownership,” the companies added.

For its part, Boundless aims to ease the “transparency challenges” SMEs face in getting funding, working with lenders, financiers and funding partners to match businesses with the best capital solution, the release said.

“Adding Clearco to their marketplace provides a much-needed working capital provider specific to their eCommerce customer-base,” the companies said.

The partnership comes as American merchants aren’t feeling all that optimistic about the future, meaning that proper working capital management is critical as they try to grow.

“Responding to these challenges, new working capital products and financial services have emerged, offering more innovative and flexible solutions designed to help insulate businesses from ongoing economic fluctuations such as inflation, interest rate changes and even currency volatility,” PYMNTS wrote last week.

Among these solutions are products such as virtual and commercial cards, supply chain finance, invoice finance and asset-based lending. They offer businesses quicker access to money and improve cash flow management, while letting them invest in growth opportunities without being saddled with traditional debt.

While observers anticipate that the macroeconomic environment will remain more or less dynamic and unpredictable for the rest of 2024, top performers are focused on changing the cash-conversion culture across their companies and using advanced digital analytics solutions, PYMNTS added.

“The tightening of monetary policy and inflationary pressures have suddenly made a lot of these corporates realize they need working capital for two reasons,” Chavi Jafa, head of commercial and money movement solutions, Asia Pacific, at Visa, said in an interview with PYMNTS. “One, for short-term working capital to make sure that they don’t have any operational disturbances. And two, for strategic long-term investments into newer technologies and digital solutions.”

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