Auto companies warm up to invoice discounting to boost suppliers’ cash flow

Under invoice discounting, a lender settles the claims of a supplier upon the receipt of goods by the buyer and the buyer then repays the lender after a pre-determined period.
It is facilitated through trade receivables discounting system (TReDS), an invoice discounting regime set up by the Reserve Bank of India in 2017 to improve the cash flows of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).
M1Xchange, one of three TReDS players in the country, said it currently gets more than 10% of its volume from the automotive sector.
The platform is facilitating transactions of over Rs 1,000 crore a month, M1Xchange chief executive Sundeep Mohindru told ET. Business particularly picked up during the Covid-19 lockdowns, he said.
The Amazon-backed company has tied up with about 50 large automotive companies and their MSME suppliers that have routed about Rs 1,300 crore worth of business through M1Xchange in the last three years.


