Wayflyer, the revenue-based financing and growth platform for e-commerce businesses, has secured a $253mn debt financing facility from Credit Suisse.

Wayflyer will use the additional debt facility to support further origination, enabling it to quickly provide funding to e-commerce businesses helping them fuel growth, improve cash flow and drive sales. It will also allow Wayflyer to improve liquidity and support its ambition to offer the most competitive rates to its customers, in the U.S, and Western Europe. 

Wayflyer is proud of the firm’s robust business model, its disciplined underwriting model, and its position as a leading partner to some of the largest financiers in the world. Wayflyer also agreed to a $300m debt line with J.P. Morgan earlier this year.

Helping to solve working capital problems globally! 

Wayflyer specializes in providing funding to e-commerce businesses, helping them solve critical working capital problems that can constrain growth. By improving cash flow its customers are able to seize new opportunities such as acquiring additional stock, hiring talent, or simply improving the profitability and resilience of their business. 

Aidan Corbett, Co-Founder, and CEO, of Wayflyer comments: “Now, more than ever, e-commerce businesses need access to fair, flexible, and affordable funding solutions from a trusted and resilient partner. “At a practical level, this deal helps support our objective to offer the fairest terms and the best rates to our customers while advancing Wayflyer’s unwavering commitment to being a trusted partner, irrespective of the impact of wider economic conditions on the market.” 

To apply for funding or to find out more about how Wayflyer is helping e-commerce businesses, visit HERE!

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U.S. regulators have selected a group of Chinese companies for inspection. As reported by Reuters, e-commerce giants such as Alibaba Group and JD.com will be among the companies selected.

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The move came immediately after Beijing and Washington had reached an agreement on August 26 that finally allowed U.S. regulators to examine the accounting of Chinese companies. This would end a fight that could have seen more than 200 Chinese companies banned from the U.S. stock market.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Oversight Board (PCAOB) has notified Alibaba that it will be among the first companies to be audited. Alibaba's U.S.-listed shares following the news saw a nearly 3% decline.

PCAOB will select the riskiest first 

The PCAOB, which oversees audits of U.S.-listed companies, announced on Friday that the companies that were to go through the examination process had already been notified. They also announced that their staff will arrive in Hong Kong in mid-September.

The order for passing the audits of U.S.-listed companies will be based on risk factors. Guided by factors such as size and the sector to which they belong.

Kent Bonham, the PCAOB's spokesman, said in late July, "The PCAOB must have full access to the audit work papers of any company it chooses to examine or investigate, no omissions, no exceptions."

Alibaba could come off the expulsion list

On August 1, Alibaba Group announced that it could be delisted from the U.S. Stock Exchange because of the conflict between the Chinese government and U.S. regulators. 

Now things could change with the new agreement: If the PCAOB does not conduct a full inspection or investigation within the next three years, Alibaba Group will remain on the expelled list, otherwise, if the inspection is conducted and yields a favorable result, Alibaba could come off the expulsion list. 

Meanwhile, Alibaba has pledged to continue to comply with laws and regulations and strive to maintain dual listing status on both the New York Stock Exchange and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange

"Hong Kong and New York are important financial centers in the world. Openness, diversity, and high internationalization are their common characteristics. Hong Kong is also the starting point of Alibaba's globalization strategy. We are full of China's economy and future. Firm confidence." said Daniel Zhang, Alibaba’s CEO.

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Walmart has decided to enter the so-called ‘streaming wars'. To that end, it has partnered with Paramount Global to offer its streaming service, Paramount+, to its subscribers. In doing so, it is taking its membership offering to the next level by adding a new streaming benefit. 

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The streaming service benefit is being offered as ‘another way Walmart gives its members more for less with Walmart+’ as the company is saying in their public and promotional statements. 

Walmtar+ is a membership discount program for Walmart customers at the store and at the gas pump, and now adds services of music and video streaming. 

Walmart+ will continue to cost $98 per year or $12.95 per month and includes the Paramount+ Essential Plan subscription for an additional $59.

Walmart needs to up its game

Walmart+ package with the addition of the Paramount+ Essential Plan, is a bit higher price-wise than Amazon Prime, faring $157 per year, versus the $139 from Amazon Prime.

If we add to the equation the fact that Amazon Prime library in the U.S. passes over the mark of 25.000 different titles available for streaming - among movies, tv shows, documentaries, concerts, and so on - it becomes quite clear that Walmart will need to offer a pretty compelling collection of exclusive content, not available already in Amazon Prime Video, if it wants to be competitive. 

And this won’t be an easy feat. Besides all that, one question remains: is this new alliance between Walmart and Paramount a sign of a possible rupture between Paramount and Amazon? Otherwise, it would make too much sense to have Paramount exclusive content in Amazon and not in the Paramount+ streaming service, or vice versa. 

All in all, only time will tell if Walmart has made the right call, or if - as it looks - this is a desperate measure to remain competitive in the complex membership/streaming market that has been absolutely dominated by Amazon recently.

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