Building Trusted Payment Infrastructure for Resilient Manufacturing Supply Chains

Manufacturers increasingly need to build new supplier relationships, diversify supply chains and trade across borders. Yet when two businesses have limited trading history, a basic problem remains: who takes the risk first?

The buyer may not want to pay before goods are delivered or agreed milestones are achieved. The supplier may be unwilling to manufacture, ship or commit working capital without greater certainty of payment.

Traditional trade-finance instruments can provide this certainty, but for many SMEs they can be too complex, expensive or slow for everyday transactions.

RedPill Verify is building a digital conditional-payment infrastructure designed to address this trust gap.

The solution allows a buyer and supplier to agree the conditions of a transaction in advance. Funds can then be protected while agreed documentary or milestone evidence is assessed, with payment released when the agreed conditions have been satisfied.

Our technology incorporates digital evidence collection, document verification and an AI-supported condition engine designed to identify discrepancies and exceptions. Where an agreement cannot be reached, an independent dispute-resolution process can support an outcome.

The project is based on more than 15 years of first-hand experience in global trade finance, working with businesses ranging from SMEs through to some of the world's largest corporates. A recurring challenge throughout that experience has been enabling companies to trade confidently when there is insufficient trust or trading history between counterparties.

Proposed cooperation project

We are seeking partners to design and undertake a practical pilot focused initially on manufacturing supply chains.

Potential use cases include:

• onboarding and trading with a new supplier;

• advance payments for manufactured or bespoke goods;

• milestone and stage payments;

• machinery and equipment purchases;

• component and raw-material procurement;

• domestic and cross-border supplier relationships;

• transactions where documentary evidence is required before payment.

The aim is not simply to demonstrate technology. We want to work with participating businesses to understand where payment uncertainty affects procurement decisions, supplier relationships and working capital, then test whether conditional payments and digital evidence can reduce that friction.

Partners we would like to meet

We are particularly interested in collaborating with:

• manufacturing SMEs and larger manufacturers;

• automotive, aerospace, engineering and advanced-manufacturing businesses;

• businesses with complex or international supply chains;

• universities and applied research organisations;

• supply-chain and procurement technology providers;

• banks, payment institutions and financial-infrastructure partners;

• organisations specialising in digital identity, document verification or supply-chain data;

• European partners interested in participating in a cross-border pilot.

RedPill Verify can contribute the existing technology platform, trade-finance domain expertise, conditional-payment methodology and the commercial lead for the proposed pilot.

We are looking for partners that can contribute real manufacturing use cases, users, supply-chain expertise, research capability or complementary technology.

Our longer-term objective is to create a scalable infrastructure that gives SMEs access to the type of transaction certainty traditionally available through complex trade-finance products, but delivered through a simpler digital experience.

We would welcome discussions with organisations interested in jointly developing and testing this approach through a Eureka cooperation project.

Topic

Advanced Manufacturing / Digitalisation / FinTech / Supply Chain Resilience

If the portal only permits one topic, select the closest option to Advanced Manufacturing or Digitalisation of Industry.

Type of cooperation sought

Research and development cooperation / Pilot project / Technology cooperation

We are seeking manufacturing partners for live use-case validation and pilots, alongside technology, academic and financial-infrastructure partners capable of supporting development and cross-border scale-up.