Cross-border corporate payments and supply chain management company Tradeshift says Brexit is to blame for a plummeting of business-to-business transactions, reports said late last week.
Tradeshift CEO and Co-founder Christian Lanng told the publication during the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland that market uncertainty has led to a reduction in B2B trade and, therefore, business-to-business payments processed on the Tradeshift platform.
“We see the numbers,” he said. “There has been a huge drop in the purchase orders in the U.K. in December last year, especially in retail. But it’s cross-sector: it’s manufacturing, retail, logistics.”
Lanng added that the ramifications of Brexit uncertainty can be examined outside the context of political debate. Adding just 10 minutes of custom checks to cross-border orders, for instance, will “create a traffic am that cannot be resolved,” he said, adding that “nobody is really engaging in any serious way with the people who know how [supply chains] work.”
Last month, Tradeshift announced the acquisition of Babelway, a cloud integration company that Tradeshift said will enable it to enhance its supply chain platform integration capabilities. Companies will be able to access Babelway tools via Tradeshift Link to integrate an array of digital platforms used in the procure-to-pay and B2B sales processes.
“We believe that B2B commerce should be connected, digital and flexible,” Lanng said in a statement at the time. “We’ve been partnering with Babelway for over six years, and in that time we have seen the massive value their technology provides for our users.”
The takeover followed previous news that Tradeshift had submitted an unsolicited bid to acquire B2B payments and eInvoicing company Basware. Reports last week said that shareholders at Arrowgrass Capital Partners LLP have agreed to extend the deadline to reach an agreement, with acquisition talks ongoing.
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