By selling invoices worth around almost €200 million online since it was created scarcely five years ago, the Brussels-based Fintech scale-up has enabled a good thousand European entrepreneurs to keep their head above water, and it has also helped thousands of employees to keep their job in SMEs in a precarious situation.

Edebex has reported growth of 93% in France, 171% in Luxembourg, and 179% in Portugal. Edebex company has now reached break-even and is recruiting to acquire the resources it needs to fulfil its ambitions: from technology to human resources management, innovation is decidedly ubiquitous at Edebex.

Edebex was started as an effective response to a real problem and received the unwavering support of investors; with a simple idea and a closely knit, expert team, the company has achieved success in Belgium, Luxembourg and other jurisdictions too.

In this period of crisis, with its corollary of bankruptcies in domino, good liquidity management is a real condition for the survival of companies. According to an analysis and studies on the perception of the main causes of bankruptcy, up to 29% of bankruptcies are due to late payment. ccording to Ebedex, almost 1,000 Luxemburg companies are going bankrupt each year.

“We were aware that we had developed a reliable and agile alternative to conventional factoring and other solutions in the banking sector. It is now all too clear that our online platform for selling accounts receivable addresses a need of society that exceeds our wildest imagination,” noted Xavier Corman, co-founder and CEO of Edebex. 

Edebex constitutes first and foremost a supportive, win-win bond with entrepreneurs. It does so by enabling, on the one hand, SMEs with cashflow problems to sell their customer invoices, thus providing them with the cash they need immediately and without having to wait for the payment deadline. On the other hand, companies with liquidity surpluses are afforded an opportunity to buy those invoices: an investment that carries very little risk and brings in a clearly higher return than anything else available on the market.

“Being serial entrepreneurs ourselves, we want our customers to preserve their dignity and freedom when it comes to finding the funds they need to meet their commitments to a customer or supplier. By the same token, this prevents the drama of ‘domino bankruptcies’ and the closing of businesses that afflict the old continent to such a degree,” said David Van der Looven, co-founder and Sales and Marketing Manager of Edebex.

Another commitment of the employer to his employee is to pay him timely. Here once again Edebex supports this social aspect. “Redundancies are an easy solution unfortunately (albeit not very effective in the long run) for dealing with a setback for an entrepreneur facing difficulties. All the more so as he is also abandoned by the banks at such a juncture,” concluded Xavier Corman. “Many of our customers who call on our services tell us that they were able to raise the operating funds they need without having to cut into their lifeblood.”

Edebex was founded in January 2013 by 4 repeat entrepreneurs; it is an online trading platform, whose beta version was launched in September 2013 and enables SMEs to sell their trade receivables in less than 72 hours, while offering investors a high return and a capital guarantee.