Equifax Teams To Launch Canadian SMB Credit Scoring Service

Equifax, the credit scoring company, and Thinking Capital announced on Tuesday (July 10) the launch of BillMarket, a solution that brings together a small business credit grading and financing application designed specifically for Canadian small businesses.

In a press release, Equifax said BillMarket brings clarity to the industry by making it easy for small businesses to understand their credit profile and use it to extend payment terms in their supply chain. As of July 10, Canadian small businesses can instantly access their free credit grade and available credit on BillMarket’s website.

“We created a grade for small businesses so they can better understand the quality of their business credit and clearly communicate it to suppliers and other interested parties. This enables suppliers to more easily and confidently assess small businesses as potential partners, and at the same time drives down their DSO (days sales outstanding),” said Lisa Nelson, president of Equifax Canada, in the press release.

Equifax said the new solution leverages Equifax’s small business grade to come up with a credit limit that Canadian small and medium-sized businesses can then use to extend payments. By knowing how much credit a small business can access, extending supplier terms is easy and secure with BillMarket.

“BillMarket creates a new language of credit for small business in Canada. For the first time, there is a practical way to talk about and put a dollar value on small business credit in Canada,” noted Jeff Mitelman, CEO and co-founder of Thinking Capital. “BillMarket expands the purchasing power for Canadian SMBs and eliminates friction in the supply chain. Through BillMarket, small businesses can translate their credit grade to real-time available credit that they can use to extend payments with suppliers by up to 120 days. BillMarket represents a cash flow revolution for the Canadian small business market.”

According to Equifax, BillMarket offers several key benefits for SMBs: It frees up working capital by extending supplier payments up to 120 days, removes the need for small businesses to negotiate payment terms with each supplier, enables small businesses to build trusting relationships with business partners and provides suppliers with a payment solution that removes friction in the supply chain by enabling them to receive much faster payments from certified customers.