BorderDollar provides investors with opportunities to invest in real-world assets through SME cross-border trade invoice financing. 

The trade finance gap is $2.5T worldwide, and we are focusing on the maritime industry in SEA which represents a $500B gap with annual growth of 9.6% (https://www.adb.org/publications/2023-trade-finance-gaps-growth).

These SMEs are underserved by the traditional financial institutions, experiences tight cashflows, and inefficiencies in the supply chain. These SMEs face tight cashflow problems because they have short-term needs for the money, but customers will only pay them after anywhere between 30-90 days. With invoice financing / freight factoring, these SMEs get upfront funding thus freeing them for important things such as paying their employees on time, rent, etc.

The BorderDollar platform involves two stakeholders: investors, and businesses.

Investor-facing platform:

Investors refer to individuals who want to finance invoices in exchange for a certain amount of returns, i.e. between 6-11% APR. Here on the investor-facing side, investors connect their wallets, choose a liquidity pool to fund, and how much they want to fund.  

Business-facing platform:

SMEs which require cash will upload their invoices, and we will assess these invoices internally before putting them up for funding by funders. On this end of the platform, businesses undergo KYC. They will then receive 80-90% of their invoices' value in fiat using an off-ramp service. For example, when we onboard SMEs from the Philippines, we can use Moneygram for money transfers because of their collaboration with Circle and Stellar.

These invoices will initially be assessed manually through SME owner interviews and due diligence, along with our risk scorecard. In the future, we will integrate machine learning for automated risk assessments for scalability.

For more technical information, please refer to the technical architecture document below.

Deliverable 1: Liquidity pool to crowdfund invoices

• Description: Develop Soroban smart contracts to allow users to send funds to a liquidity pool to fund invoices
• Measure of completion: Smart contracts on the Testnet that function as designed
• Estimated date of completion: 14 March 2024 (1.5 months)
• Budget: $16,000

Deliverable 2: Backend services to interact with the blockchain

• Description: Develop backend capability to execute smart contracts for data storage and transactions
• Measure of completion: BorderDollar platform can store data on the blockchain - data is successfully recorded on Testnet and is retrievable
• Estimated date of completion: 14 March 2024 (1.5 months)
• Budget: $12,000

Deliverable 3: Automated fund solver

• Description: Develop a solver that allows funds to move fluidly in and out of the pool
• Measure of completion: Working solver that successfully allocates and un-allocates funds in pools across a variety of specified test scenarios
• Estimated date of completion: 14 March 2024 (1.5 months)
• Budget: $11,000

Jackie Tan, co-founder and CEO: 7 years of deep tech experience, 2x founder with 2 exits in fintech and data science, Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia, PhD in data science, founding member of web3 financial inclusion startup that raised $14 million, consulted the Indonesian government on fraud analysis, designed P2P lending algorithms for banks, head of product in Tribe, AngelHack (web3 ecosystem builder), designed Stellar Side Quests (yes that Side Quest) [LinkedIn]

Kenneth Yap, co-founder and COO: 4 years of startup experience, 2x founder in fintech with >HKD20M transactions processed, 3 years in impact venture building space, finance advisory committee in local university, regional partnership lead for entrepreneurship office in Singapore University of Social Sciences. Experienced in cross-border transactions and trade finance in Citibank and China Construction Bank [LinkedIn]  

Our team is set up for success because:
We are a team of experienced entrepreneurs and engineers, with a combined total of over a decade of experience in the tech space. We've also been part of the web3 ecosystem builders, and our thesis is that widespread adoption for web3 technology is combining the players from both Web 2 and web3 into a coherent blend. We are part of the Singapore batch of Antler - one of the world's best incubators. We have experience in trade finance and fraud analysis, and are confident about how we can execute BorderDollar. 

In a nutshell, our reviewers on Submittable opined that (we paraphrase):

• The process flow seems unclear, i.e. how funds flowed, and how the Anchors are involved. This reviewer also opined we don't seem to be familiar with Stellar. He/she also stated that we needed someone experienced in trade finance so as to reduce fraudulent behavior.

• Another reviewer opined that 150k is a lot that we're asking for, and that we were building on Stellar and not on Soroban, and that our deliverables were not related to Stellar integration

• Last reviewer opined that we did not include any working prototype

The feedback centers around us clarifying whether we know what we're doing. We thank the reviewers for their sharp comments, and continued buidling. Between our submission on Aug 10 2023 and today's resubmission (Jan 9 2024), we're proud to share that we:

• Were accepted into world-renowned incubator Antler Singapore (https://antler.co/), and successfully graduated from the program 

• Recruited an advisor with >20 years of risk experience in banks and startups to advise us on credit risk

• Fleshed out details on co-founders Jackie and Kenneth's credentials, e.g., Jackie has done fraud analysis for the Indonesian government and designed P2P lending system for a Myanmar bank, and Kenneth has trade finance experience in Citibank

• Fleshed out our technical architecture diagram

• Was onboarded SgTraDex (https://sgtradex.com/) - a government-supported trade data highway - as a financier. We will be able to retrieve data off the highway for invoice verification as part of our credit risk scoring method

• Secured an agreement with the Singaporean and Chinese government to fund exporters along the Singapore-China trade corridor

To reiterate, I am very familiar with Stellar, as I helped design the Side Quests during my time in AngelHack and spent considerable time not just with developing on Stellar, but also distill it in a form that the community can enjoy. My co-founder Kenneth is an expert in trade finance, given his experience in a bank.

We have also reviewed the spending, and will reduce the amount requested significantly and focus on parts that involve Stellar and Soroban Integration. 

1. Platform development (Month 0-3): Focus on the core development of the platform that integrates Soroban. Budget: $38,000
2. Testing and code audit (Month 3-4): Ensure that the platform is safe and that there are no bugs in the smart contracts. Budget: $15,000
3. Marketing and partnerships (Month 3-12): Acquire investors and strategic partners. Budget: $25,000
4. Launch (Month 4-6): Officially launch BorderDollar platform.
5. Post-launch (Month 6+): Refine the product based on community feedback. Budget: $20,000
6. Fundraising (Month 4+): Raise seed funding based on the traction obtained during launch.

The activation fund will help us focus on the first part of the roadmap, i.e. the platform development phase.