Velotrade Uses Dun & Bradstreet Tools To Track Finances During Pandemic

Digital invoice financing service provider Velotrade will work with programs from commercial data and analytics firm Dun & Bradstreet to assess a clear picture of finances for B2B payments during the coronavirus pandemic.

Velotrade’s services allow businesses to sign up their invoices to be financed by willing investors, recognizing invoices as a financial asset as trade receivables.

A press release stated that Velotrade would be utilizing two tools, D&B Credit and D&B Hoovers, to help businesses see a path to growth during the pandemic times.

D&B Credit, the release states, will help the company see how likely businesses are to pay their bills, using a cloud-based network of commercial trade data. Using D&B Credit will then enable Velotrade to access segmentation tools, global alerts, configurable credit reports and other tools.

With D&B Hoovers, Velotrade will look at industry insights and market intelligence to access an “in-depth financial understanding of individual prospects to better target qualified new business opportunities,” the release states.

All of this, the release states, is a response to the financial upheaval and turmoil brought on by the coronavirus, which has forced shutdowns as countries attempted to contain the spread of the virus.

Velotrade CEO Gianluca Pizzituti said it was necessary to keep on top of a financial climate that often changes nowadays.

“[I]n a supply chain heavily disrupted by COVID-19, the financial health of companies is constantly changing,” Pizzituti said in the statement. “Data and analytics tools are essential to overcoming uncertainty and we are confident that Dun & Bradstreet’s actionable data will contribute to our business success.”

Sam Tidswell-Norrish, executive vice president with Dun & Bradstreet, said it had “never been so important” to have access to accurate and comprehensive data about finances.

Velotrade and Dun & Bradstreet were originally introduced through Velotrade’s partnership Cyberport, the Hong Kong-based hub hosting around 1,500 tech companies. Cyberport also played a role in showing how data could be wielded to assist businesses during the pandemic.

Invoicing has become a perilous thing in the age of the coronavirus, as near 80 percent of B2B payments, a recent PYMNTS study found, are still made by paper checks. In the pandemic environment, where working from home is the norm, some payments are slowed, throwing some businesses, particularly SMBs, into flux.