Cloud factoring pioneer OLTA gains first credit union as new partner

OLTA, which provides Japan’s first online factoring service “OLTA Cloud Factoring,” has begun offering the cloud factoring service “Nagano Kenshin Cloud Factoring powered by OLTA” in partnership with Nagano Ken Shinyo Kumiai. This is the first partnership with a credit union for cloud factoring services. With the partnership with Nagano Ken Shinyo Kumiai, the number of regional financial institutions OLTA has OEM partnerships with for cloud factoring services has expanded to 38.

In the cloud factoring service partnership between OLTA and Nagano Ken Shinyo Kumiai, OLTA will provide consulting on web service planning, development, implementation, and operation to Nagano Ken Shinyo Kumiai, while Nagano Ken Shinyo Kumiai will introduce the service to its corporate and sole proprietor customers.

For Nagano Ken Shinyo Kumiai’s customers, in addition to the services of their usual financial institution, they will be able to use OLTA’s cloud factoring, making it easier to procure short-term and small-amount working capital. It can be utilized by customers as a new funding method that allows them to procure necessary funds at the right time and early.
Nagano Ken Shinyo Kumiai is working to support and contribute to the regional economy while continuing to transform itself according to the challenges faced by regions and companies in various business environments such as post-COVID, yen depreciation, and rising energy prices, while also striving to improve performance and strengthen and improve its management structure. For Nagano Ken Shinyo Kumiai, the partnership with OLTA is a new initiative that contributes to improving customer convenience, revitalizing the regional economy that has been greatly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and improving the organization’s operational efficiency.

Factoring is a method where companies sell their “pending invoices” generated from commercial transactions to obtain working capital early. OLTA is a pioneer company that started providing “OLTA Cloud Factoring,” Japan’s first online factoring service, in 2017. It realizes a “fast, easy, and reasonable” service through AI-powered assessments. It is used by many SMEs with the “№1 number of partner banks”, and the total application amount has already exceeded 100 billion yen.

In recent years, “complementary finance (alternative finance)” utilizing technology has been attracting attention as a new funding method for SMEs, and the use of online factoring represented by “OLTA Cloud Factoring” is rapidly expanding.

Many small corporations and sole proprietors were hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic and used effectively interest-free and unsecured loans (so-called “zero-zero loans”). As repayments for zero-zero loans begin and businesses struggle to recover due to the prolonged pandemic, bankruptcies of companies that received COVID-19 loans, including zero-zero loans, from both public and private sectors have notably increased since March 2022. It is said that the uncollectible amount of COVID-19 loans could exceed 47 billion yen, and support measures for SMEs other than loans are being sought.

The “2022 White Paper on Small and Medium Enterprises” (P386–387) published by the Small and Medium Enterprise Agency on April 26, 2022, features “OLTA Cloud Factoring” as “alternative finance (complementary finance), a new funding method for SMEs.” Furthermore, regarding complementary finance as a whole, it is speculated that “the number of SMEs using it (in the future) will increase” and “it is expected to become more widespread in Japanese society, realizing smoother cash flow for SMEs,” suggesting further development of alternative finance including online factoring.

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