Whatever Happened to Platform Black?

Platform Black was the UK's first online invoice trading platform - it actually launched before MarketInvoice. The company allowed businesses to auction individual invoices to institutional and retail investors who would buy them at a discount. After failing to scale the model profitably, Platform Black rebranded to Sancus Finance, then Sancus Lending, and exited the invoice finance market entirely. 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 finance and development loans, operating primarily in Jersey, Guernsey, Gibraltar, and the Isle of Man. There is no remaining invoice finance product. The pivot was complete - the company moved from fintech invoice trading to traditional secured property lending. The transformation was so thorough that most people in the property lending space have no idea Sancus started life as an invoice trading platform.

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.

MarketInvoice faced the same challenge and eventually pivoted to whole-ledger facilities and embedded lending before being acquired by Allica Bank. 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 Allica Bank (formerly Kriya/MarketInvoice), 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, or read about what happened to MarketInvoice - the platform that succeeded where Platform Black could not.