What are Receivables?

Receivables sit at the center of global commerce. At any moment, businesses around the world are carrying between fifteen and twenty trillion dollars in unpaid invoices. In many economies, this stock of trade credit exceeds short-term bank lending and functions as the primary way companies finance daily operations. It rarely shows up in public markets, but it underwrites most of what moves through them.

Most businesses do not get paid when work is completed or goods are delivered. Payment follows later. Thirty days. Sixty days. Sometimes longer. That delay creates a receivable: a legally enforceable claim on future cash. On a balance sheet, it appears as ‘accounts receivable’.

This structure is older than modern finance. Long before equity markets or central banking, merchants relied on deferred settlement to move goods. Roman traders recorded obligations in ledgers and settled months later. Medieval merchants did the same across Europe’s trade routes and commercial fairs. Receivables were the market default, and trade credit allowed commerce to scale beyond immediate exchange.

Receivables persist because they solve a coordination problem. Buyers need time between receiving goods and generating revenue from them. Sellers need liquidity to keep operating while they wait. Receivables absorb the gap. They allow production, distribution, and sale to proceed without requiring cash at every step.

Nearly every operating business depends on this structure. Manufacturers sell to distributors on terms. Distributors sell to retailers on terms. Retailers sell to institutional buyers on terms. Governments purchase from contractors on extended payment schedules. Hospitals bill insurers after care is delivered. Infrastructure firms wait years for milestone payments. These arrangements account for massive sections of the economy.

*On terms means the buyer receives goods but does not pay immediately

Carrying receivables is manageable for large firms with deep balance sheets. For smaller suppliers, it often is not. Waiting months to be paid can restrict growth or threaten solvency. To address that constraint, receivables are routinely financed. A company can sell an invoice at a discount in exchange for immediate cash. The buyer collects the full amount later and earns the spread, assuming the counterparty pays as agreed.

This happens through several established channels. Some firms sell receivables outright through factoring. Others borrow against them while retaining ownership. Banks finance receivables tied to cross-border trade. Funds pool large volumes of invoices and securitize the cash flows. The structures differ, but the exposure is consistent: short-duration credit linked to real economic transactions.

*Factoring means a company is selling its invoice to a 3rd party for reduced immediate cash instead of waiting the full term.

The receivables market expands with commerce itself. As supply chains lengthen and payment terms stretch, the volume of outstanding receivables grows. Over the past two decades, large buyers have systematically extended payment windows, pushing financing pressure onto suppliers and increasing demand for receivables financing as a standalone market. Changes in interest rates affect pricing and risk distribution, but they do not eliminate the underlying need for the asset.

Access has historically been a limiting factor. Participating in receivables markets requires legal enforcement, operational oversight, and scale. As a result, exposure has remained concentrated among banks, large funds, and specialized intermediaries. Until now.

Rayls is working with Brazilian market infrastructure and operating companies to bring receivables onchain in measurable volume. Through its partnership with Núclea, roughly $40,000 of receivables are already being tokenized each month. Amfi, Brazil's leading tokenization platform for private credit, is in the process of tokenizing $1 billion in receivables on Rayls. NimoFast, one of the largest agribusiness operators in Brazil, is targeting up to $100 billion in receivables on Rayls. Receivables that historically sat inside bank balance sheets or private credit funds can now be accessed and used, rather than remaining confined to institutional intermediaries.

Bringing receivables onchain does not change what the asset is. It changes who can reach it. For the first time, people like you and I can access short-duration claims backed by trade, services, and production that have long circulated inside institutional balance sheets. Opening a market that has been financing global commerce for centuries, largely out of view.

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