IPROMISE is one promise everyone should keep

It is 10am on Thursday, the agreed time to interview Matt Peacock and Paul Veric. Their ‘office’ is the Festoon Cafe in akura, but to Matt and Paul it’s where they do a lot of their business. Nothing like keeping your overheads down and the two regulars enjoy their coffee and friendly service.

Oakura is the place where they came up with the idea of IPromise. Its brilliance is in its simplicity, which is the basis of so many great ideas throughout history.

How It Began

But let’s go back to the beginning. Matt is a self-employed, consultant engineer who has happily been in business for 20+ years. There has always been one frustration though, the number of times he’s completed a job only for the other party not to pay up.

Whether it was a company going bust, or subcontractors not being paid, or individuals failing to meet their obligations was immaterial. At the end of the day Matt was tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket. Matt was even stung by three liquidations in Taranaki, leaving unsecured creditors like Matt with almost nothing.

Paul was also painfully aware of the rampant bad debt issue in this country and abroad – and the two put their heads together to find a solution. Slow payers were also a problem, especially for many small to medium enterprises, and those self-employed professionals like Matt and Paul.

“Invoicing and payment has always been a challenge,’’ says Matt euphemistically, but over the years people have put up with it. Payment in three weeks would be the best you could hope for, six weeks was often the norm and sometimes it was later than that.’’

Matt was aware of Escrow, an international trust system used by many big corporates dealing in millions of dollars, but wondered how that principle could be adapted for much smaller, everyday business people.

The equation was a simple one at the end. “How can I do a job for someone and know they have the money to pay me?’’

Equally relevant was the other side of the equation: “How does the client know if a supplier is almost in liquidation and can’t finish the job?’’

The Small Claims Court is of limited value, says Matt. “Even if you win often it’s $50 a week repayments.’’

THE SCALE OF THE PROBLEM:

Matt researched on-line and was staggered by the scale of the issue. He then wrote a White Paper which included a series of scandalous statistics. Government attempts to protect subcontractors, especially small subbies, failed.

Matt enlisted the support of Paul who was also a self-employed consultant.

Fortuitously he also lived in akura, was an old mate who liked coffee, solving problems and a different set of skills. He ticked all the boxes.

Paul went through Matt’s White Paper. “I did my own research and soon we were catching up every day. The more I read and researched the problem I became convinced that it needed to be fixed.

“The current practice of invoicing for services is so broken. So many suppliers are missing out every day and nothing is being done. We live in an instant society in many ways. Yet suppliers have to wait patiently for the 20th of the month following – hoping – to get paid, and they carry ALL the risk!.’’

Six months after their initial discussion they formed a company and IPromise was born.

THE SOLUTION, A FAIR AND SECURE PAYMENT PROCESS

IPromise supports open and easy communication between customers and suppliers. The IPromise app helps build trust and confidence between customers and suppliers.

Once the Supplier quote is agreed, payment is transferred to a secure BNZ Trust Account. That payment is only released to the supplier (ie.or tradie, contractor etc) when both parties agree the job is done satisfactorily.

There are so many benefits to both parties by using IPromise that this simple system could be a game changer for how commerce is done, both here and overseas.

There’s already been hundreds of thousands of dollars in transactions that have gone securely through IPromise. Why don’t you go online to ipromise.co.nz and get started? It really is easy.