Factoring Has Stopped Being a Paper-Based Game?

From tokenized Treasuries to direct invoice financing. Real use cases, active protocols, regulatory moves, and the gap between on-chain efficiency and legal reality.

Serge AbisherHead of special projects by Edenex

For centuries, factoring remained a conservative tool: a company ships goods, issues an invoice, waits 30 to 90 days for the buyer to pay, and a bank or factoring company advances up to 90% of the invoice amount, holding back a fee and taking on the risk. In this model, a colossal amount of liquidity is just frozen. According to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the global trade finance gap reached $2.5 trillion in 2025, with 41% of financing applications from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) getting rejected by traditional banks.

Over the last couple of years, distributed ledger and tokenization technologies have started tearing down this old structure. BlackRock, J.P. Morgan, Franklin Templeton, and other institutional players have launched working products, and the tokenized real-world asset (RWA) market is projected to potentially exceed $31 billion. At the same time, a new segment has emerged: financing against tokenized assets, securing trade contracts, and direct factoring of receivables in crypto.

Traditional factoring requires collateral — usually accounts receivable, less often inventory or bank guarantees. In crypto-factoring, digital assets serve as the collateral. But while the main instruments back in 2021–2023 were ETH or Bitcoin with their high volatility, by 2025 the situation had changed dramatically.

According to the State Street Digital Assets Survey 2025, 46% of institutional investors named a lack of tech understanding as the main barrier to using digital assets, with high market risk coming in second. One solution turned out to be tokenized U.S. Treasury bonds — an asset with fixed yield and lower risk than Bitcoin or ETH.

The BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), launched in March 2024, is expected by experts to reach $2.14 billion in assets under management in 2026 (data from RWA.xyz). The BUIDL token trades on several blockchains, including Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, and Aptos, and generates income for holders from U.S. Treasury obligations.

So what does this mean for factoring? A company looking for financing against tokenized assets doesn't have to own Bitcoin.

Tokenized assets help solve the problem of rehypothecation of the same token, which in the traditional world requires complex manual clearing. The smart contract stipulates that the same token cannot be transferred to two different lenders at the same time — the check happens at the protocol level, not through notifications and manual clearing. A number of projects use this solution, including a trade contract financing platform called Edenex. But it's important to stress: while a smart contract can reduce the rehypothecation risk for a specific on-chain asset, it doesn't solve legal issues like priority of rights, bankruptcy, off-chain collateral, double assignment, document disputes, and similar cases.

Direct Receivables Financing

Direct receivables financing without bank intermediation represents the next level of evolution. The mechanism: a company issues an invoice, tokenizes it (turning it into an NFT or an invoice token under the ERC-3643 standard), places it in a liquidity pool, and lenders from all over the world buy a share of that invoice, acquiring the right to the future payment.

Three real-life working examples:

Centrifuge — a protocol that will very likely approach $2 billion in total value locked (TVL). The chain is transparent: the asset originator (a factoring company) creates a pool, investors provide liquidity in stablecoins, and smart contracts automatically distribute payments from buyers.

Defactor — a project that lets traditional factoring companies tokenize their invoice portfolios and get financing from DeFi pools.

Request Network — a decentralized layer for invoicing. Companies create on-chain invoices, and these records build a credit history that factoring protocols use during underwriting.

The key innovation is atomic settlements. In classic factoring, between the shipment of goods, the invoice issuance, the buyer's credit check, and the actual transfer of funds, two to three weeks can pass. In the on-chain model, after all checks are done, the entire settlement component can be executed in minutes: as soon as the buyer confirms receipt of the goods (data comes in through an oracle, say from a logistics provider), the smart contract instantly transfers the funds to the supplier. The Edenex platform declares up to 24 hours for document approval, up to 120 hours to receive financing, and also uses atomic settlement with investors and lenders.

The Currency of Crypto-Factoring

Any factoring requires a unit of account. In traditional markets, it's the local fiat currency. In on-chain factoring, settlements are done mostly in stablecoins — USDC, USDT, and DAI.

In 2026, the market began shifting toward yield-bearing stablecoins backed by Treasury bonds. Ethena USDe (a synthetic dollar backed by short-term Treasuries) — market experts talk about its high market cap. A lender providing liquidity to a pool that backs tokenized invoices can now hold capital in instruments that generate extra yield even during downtime. And a supplier who receives financing can convert USDe into fiat through a partner bank or use it to pay their own suppliers.

Who Is Already Financing Crypto Assets

J.P. Morgan Kinexys. The bank launched a platform for tokenized collateral, allowing clients to pledge BUIDL, tokenized invoices, and even Bitcoin through an institutional custody solution. As of early 2026, the platform processes about $3 billion per day (sources vary on this, it's a ballpark figure).

Maple Finance. A protocol for institutional lending against digital assets. Total value locked (TVL) at the end of 2025 was several billion dollars, and the SYRUP token was listed on exchanges in December 2025.

Anchorage Digital and BitGo. Custodial banks providing collateralized financing services for crypto-factoring. The client places tokenized assets in a secure wallet, receives financing in stablecoins, and the custodian guarantees that the collateral cannot be moved without the lender's consent.

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Regulatory Environment: The US, the EU, and the Move Toward Rules

For a long time, financing against crypto assets operated in a gray zone. In 2025, the situation began to change.

United States. CFTC pilot program: Launched in 2025. The program allows the use of BTC, ETH, and stablecoins (e.g., USDC) as collateral in derivatives markets. Additionally, the GENIUS Act established rules for payment stablecoins, requiring 100% backing by high-quality liquid assets. Passed in the summer of 2025. In April 2026, the FDIC already released a draft rule for its implementation, requiring 1:1 backing of stablecoins with highly liquid assets and prohibiting the payment of interest to holders.

European Union. The MiCA regulation comes into full force on June 30, 2026, after which all crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) serving clients in the EU must have a MiCA license. Tokenized securities remain under MiFID II.

UNCITRAL. At the UN level, work is underway to integrate digital assets into the Model Law on Secured Transactions (MLST). The 2025 draft amendment introduces the concept of "control" over a digital asset as the basis for a security right.

Still, unresolved questions remain. If a debtor doesn't pay on a traditional invoice, the lender goes to court. But if the collateral is a token sitting in a smart contract on a blockchain, which court has jurisdiction, and how do you enforce a court ruling? The first arbitrations over tokenized collateral disputes began at the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) in late 2025, but case law is still very thin.

Risks and Objections

Collateral volatility. Even tokenized Treasury bonds experience minor price fluctuations on the secondary market. Large lenders build in a 30-50% margin and require automatic liquidation of the position if the collateral value falls below a threshold.

Operational risks. Losing the private key to the wallet holding the collateral means losing the asset with no recovery possible. Institutional custodians (Anchorage, BitGo, Fireblocks) use multi-signature, cold storage, and insurance policies.

Regulatory fragmentation. The jurisdiction where the token issuer is registered is defined by the contract, but in practice, a lender from the US and a borrower from Singapore might have very different views on whether the token is a security. The solution — tying it to a specific jurisdiction's law via a smart contract (choice of law) combined with notarization.

Conclusion

As of May 2026, you can say with confidence that digital assets have become a fully-fledged instrument in factoring and receivables turnover.

But three open problems remain: harmonizing the legal framework for digital collateral, standardizing collection procedures, and creating a secondary market for tokenized invoices. The question of when these problems will be solved is a question of time, not technology.

The infrastructure is mature, but the market is just getting started.