Stellar Community Fund

By Pelago (Airswift)

Airswift Supply Chain Finance Platform

SCF #16

$150.0K

Legacy v4.0 Award

Awarded

Airswift Supply Chain Finance Platform automates the full life cycle of supply chain financing process on Stellar

Products & Services

Airswift aims to build Web3 infrastructures to connect users from the universe to metaverse. It has explored the possibility to build a Supply Chain Financing (SCF) platform on Stellar and released a preliminary product for customers. However, the smart contract and USDC were not available by then. As a result, Stellar blockchain could only play a limited role in the system. With the progress in Soroban and the growth of the ecosystem, as well as the ongoing demands from our SCF customers and partners, we decided to build a web3 native SCF platform on Soroban. The platform facilitates the decentralized financing of aspects of the real-world business operations such as trade receivables and invoices natively on-chain, creating a fully transparent market which allows creditors (lenders), suppliers (borrowers), and buyers to transact without unnecessary intermediaries. Credit is essential for economic development and business growth. Only large businesses get direct access to liquid capital markets. This same access is not available to Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). The average cost of capital for the Global 2000 is ~1%, compared to >15% for SMEs. The lack of an open and transparent marketplace denies SMEs access to competitive borrowing rates. In our platform, suppliers are subject to a fair, but rigorous due diligence process to build trust between all the parties involved. In the medium term, suppliers on the platform will be able to reduce their cost of capital and improve payment terms by building a track record in repayments. Our business model is based on taking a fee for connecting suppliers and creditors thereby providing transaction funding, supported by dynamic risk analysis and reporting that gives visibility and transparency to all parties (Platform, Creditor, Supplier, and Buyer). The proposed platform will automate the entire process on-chain and settle the funds in USDC on Stellar, including: The Creditor confirms terms and conditions with the Buyer. A loan smart contract is initiated on-chain. The Supplier uploads the invoices to the platform. The Buyer validates and confirms the invoices. As soon as the invoices are confirmed, they will be minted as NFTs and airdropped to the Supplier's wallet. The Supplier could split each NFT into multiple NFTs which are the accounts payable (this Supplier owes to other suppliers). These NFTs received are locked in the same loan smart contract, then these suppliers receive the factored amount in USDC on Stellar. When the terms are up, the Buyer pays in USDC to all NFT holders at the face value. The USDCs are provided by the Creditor. This demo video explains how the platform works with an example: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eNEOysY6ipZtq7lMMO_lx-uLFVnmBv-J/view?usp=share_link. With the help of Stellar blockchain and Soroban technologies, the supply chain finance payment process becomes fully automated, trackable, and traceable.