Restaurants, Products, Service, Hotels are all reviewed globally. There is talk of Doctors, Healthcare, Hospitals and even People themselves joining the rating bandwagon. The next step are all busi [Show More]

Restaurants, Products, Service, Hotels are all reviewed globally. There is talk of Doctors, Healthcare, Hospitals and even People themselves joining the rating bandwagon. The next step are all businesses not just the “Services” segment.

According to a Walmart report in 2014, India's B2B e-commerce industry will grow to $700 billion by 2020 from $300 billion. Globally B2B accounted for $15 trillion in 2013 of which 75 percent was contributed by the US followed by the UK, Japan and China. B2B online sales will account for close to 27 percent of total manufacturing trade, which is likely to hit 25 trillion USD by 2020.

With majority B2B being done on credit, credit issues are one of the biggest issues faced by businesses today. Will you get paid? Is a question on everyone’s mind. Current ratings agencies are biased and don’t give a true market reputation/ payment intention picture. 

In an environment where there are liquidity issues, no effective legal recourse options for the small guys fighting the big guys, an online user based ratings website for businesses for credit issues could be potentially disruptive in the FinTech B2B space. A Way Out. Now the pen or rather the keyboard is once again mightier than the sword.

A user rating is such a simple concept, yet so powerful. It’s basically word of mouth and market reputation information at your fingertips. So while getting easy access to first hand information on the reviewed business is the obvious benefit, there are some not so obvious benefits too.

1. Transparency in how a company functions helps. It means there is no need to go hunting for a reference, which is not a 100% foolproof check, neither easy nor always available.

2. Trust Building by empowered stakeholders. Customers are important and so are suppliers. You can’t really exist without the latter either. So by giving them comfort, you build an all round better environment for business. If you work fair, you actually build trust. Real trust.

3. Shift in payment habit. So there will be the early adopters who instantly on learning they were rated low on their payment habit, move to change and resolve this culture. But sooner or later even the others who don’t currently care, will. Whether they do out of choice or compulsion for avoiding public shaming or just working better is another matter.

4. Responsible companies will gain respect. Early adopters who come claim their companies learn how others view them, respond and resolve issues and in turn are respected as company that is interested in doing fair business.

5. Tailored credit: With access to first hand information, payment terms, methods of payments and even prices can be tailed based expected payment habits. Companies can plan for possible interest loss on delayed payments, be more stringent in their requirements with companies who have a difficult history in payments and companies that are good paymasters can enjoy the advantage of better rates and terms.

6. Stress free to focus on improvement: While companies would like to innovate and offer better products and services, often too much time is spend on payment issues. With those out of the way, resolved or with an avenue to address those issues, frees up capacity and man hours to focus on innovation, improvement and growth.

CreditMonk.com is our answer for the small businesses who can’t go legal, who are paying a heavy price for delayed payments and non-payments against who have taken the honest out of business today.

Developed countries globally face this issue while some countries like Japan, Beligum etc. are known for paying before due date. By bringing in a downside and an upside, we hope this website works to bring answerability for all and eventually shift the cultural norm to better payment habits.