Whatever Happened to Platform Black?
The short answer: the invoice trading business is gone. What was Platform Black now sits within a group that only offers property bridging and development loans. More detail + scope
This page covers
History of Platform Black, rebrandings, exit from invoice finance, what the company does now
Not covered here
Current invoice trading platforms (see /guides/selective-invoice-finance/), invoice finance providers (see /providers/)
Platform Black was one of the UK's first online invoice trading platforms. The company allowed businesses to auction individual invoices to institutional and retail investors who would buy them at a discount. In January 2017 its owner, GLI Finance, rebranded it Sancus Finance (Alternative Credit Investor, Jan 2017); the business now trades as Sancus Lending and no longer offers invoice finance. It now operates as a property and development lender.
The Original Model
Platform Black's concept was ahead of its time. Businesses uploaded invoices to the platform, investors bid on them, and the business received immediate cash minus the investor's discount. It was peer-to-peer invoice finance - genuinely innovative and the first of its kind in the UK market.
The problem was unit economics. Individual invoice trades are small, high-frequency, and require significant credit assessment for each transaction. The platform never achieved the volume needed to make the model sustainable, particularly once larger, better-funded competitors like MarketInvoice entered the space with more venture capital backing and stronger marketing.
Despite the commercial difficulties, Platform Black deserves credit for proving the concept. Every online invoice trading platform that followed - MarketInvoice, Triver, and others - built on the model that Platform Black pioneered.
The Rebrand Journey
What Sancus Does Now
Sancus Lending provides bridging and development finance to property developers, with UK offices in Manchester and London (sancus.com). Its site lists no invoice finance product. The pivot was complete - the company moved from fintech invoice trading to traditional secured property lending.
Why the Invoice Trading Model Struggled
Platform Black's experience highlights a fundamental challenge with peer-to-peer invoice trading. Each individual invoice requires its own credit assessment - the debtor, the amount, the payment terms, the sector. At small volumes, the cost of that assessment exceeds the margin on the trade. At large volumes, you need institutional investors, at which point you are essentially running a fund rather than a marketplace.
Other early UK invoice trading platforms faced the same challenge and either pivoted to whole-ledger facilities and embedded lending or exited the market entirely. The pure selective invoice trading model remains viable only for larger invoices where the economics justify individual assessment.
Alternatives for Selective Invoice Finance
For businesses looking for selective invoice finance (selling individual invoices rather than the whole ledger), options in 2026 include Hydr, Triver, and several other platforms. The selective model has evolved since Platform Black's early days - modern platforms use automated credit scoring and API integrations with accounting software to reduce the per-invoice assessment cost that made the original model uneconomic.
See our comparison tool for current providers offering selective invoice finance.
Founder & Managing Director, Muswell Rose, founder and PSC of Best Business Loans Ltd
Adam is the founder and managing director of Muswell Rose and a founder of Best Business Loans Ltd, the company behind Market Invoice. He spent over three years as managing director of Penny, a UK invoice finance business, and his career runs through insurance, mortgages, commercial finance and fintech lending. He writes the Market Invoice library.
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