Since the financial crash of 2008, High Street Banks have become notoriously stringent about lending to small businesses, and to be perfectly honest lending to anyone really. Go to any business networking event and it won’t be long before you hear the six year old mantra that High Street banks do not want to part with their loans unless you have a pretty good track record over three years, or you are willing to put down your personal assets as collateral. However, Market Invoice is one of a growing number of non-banks or alternative financial institutions that are bucking the trend and have created an online solution for SMEs looking to access funding. The fin-tech or Finance Technology it is using is also chipping away at the £80 billion stranglehold, or 85 per cent of the market that traditional banks have on invoice trading, where a business trades invoices with long payment terms, typically with corporate clients or well-known brands – in return for liquidity that would enable the business to continue to trade. Oliver Cummings, Partnerships Manager at Market Invoice, explains to Kay Chauhan how the fin-tech sector is helping SMEs access flexible and cheaper funding to run and grow their business, in the same way that ITunes and Spotify took the music industry by storm.