Supply chain payments company Tradeshift has always aimed to help businesses get paid faster. Today, it’s doubling down on that mission by partnering with MakerDAO to leverage the blockchain to speed up payments.

MakerDAO is the creator of Dai, a decentralized stablecoin based on the Ethereum blockchain, as well as the Dai Credit System. Through the partnership, Tradeshift will leverage MakerDAO’s credit system to create a supply chain liquidity marketplace. The marketplace aims to serve businesses, which can leverage transactions and digital assets on the Tradeshift platform to create short-term financing models; developers, who can build apps for investors; and investors, who benefit the tokenization of assets such as invoices made available on new financial apps.

As Tradeshift Co-Founder Gert Sylvest described, it was previously difficult for trade receivables to leverage the blockchain, since the market has tight margins that do not allow for the volatile fluctuations that come with settlement in digital currencies. The difference in the Dai Credit System, Sylvest explained, is that it is “a transparent and stable token that allows anyone to represent real-world currency settlements on the blockchain.”

The Dai maintains stability because it is an open smart contract platform that allows anyone to issue Dai against their assets, which are held as collateral. When users want to retrieve their collateral, they return the Dai currency they issued, plus a fee based on how much time they used it for. This removes the need for users to blindly trust a third party. MakerDAO’s video explains a bit more in-depth:

Rune Christensen, CEO of MakerDAO said that this partnership “proves the potential of the blockchain to level the economic playing field for businesses of all sizes around the globe.” He added that the collaboration offers “new options for investors by creating an entirely new class of investment vehicles with vetted risk, based on real world assets.”

Founded in 2010, Tradeshift helps business’ buyers and suppliers digitize and collaborate on their transactions using any supply chain app. At FinovateEurope 2012, Tradeshift demoed Instant Payments, which allows small businesses to receive payments instantly on the Tradeshift platform in exchange for a small interest rate.

The company’s business commerce platform connects more than 1.5 million companies across 190 countries. To date, the California-based company has processed more than half a trillion dollars in transaction value. Tradeshift has raised $432 million, including its most recent $250 million round from Goldman Sachs this spring which vaulted the company’s valuation up to $1.1 billion.

Supply chain payments company Tradeshift is unifying supply chain payments elements with the launch of Tradeshift Pay. The California-based company’s cloud platform will bring together supply chain payments, supply chain finance, and blockchain-based early payments in a single offering.

The aim of Tradeshift Pay is to relinquish the $9 trillion in liquid capital that businesses have held up in accounts receivable, often caused by a disconnect between businesses and their suppliers. Tradeshift Pay offers buyers a single wallet that supports a variety of payment options, including virtual card payments, dynamic discounting, supply chain finance through bank partners, and blockchain-based payments. More than a dozen major banks and card providers support Tradeshift Pay, including HSBC, Santander, and CreditEase.

“In an industry where 50% of U.S. payments are check-based and companies around the world struggle to access finance and payments, Tradeshift Pay is a real enabler for the digitally connected economy,” said Christian Lanng, Tradeshift CEO and co-founder. “For the first time, businesses can go to one single wallet to handle all their payments, end-to-end, across all channels. And for the first time, you can do both regular and blockchain-based early payments in one platform in the cloud.”

Leveraging the blockchain not only democratizes the solution for unbanked businesses, it also allows businesses to get paid faster– lowering the average payment receipt time from 45 days down to a couple of days.

Tradeshift launched its business commerce platform in 2010 and now connects more than 1.5 million companies across 190 countries. At FinovateEurope 2012, Tradeshift demoed Instant Payments, which allows small businesses to receive payments instantly on the Tradeshift platform in exchange for a small interest rate. Earlier this year, Tradeshift launched Tradeshift Frontier, an innovation lab aimed at applying emerging enabling technologies to the supply chain. Headquartered in San Francisco, Tradeshift has offices in Copenhagen, New York, London, Paris, Suzhou, Tokyo, Munich, Frankfurt, Sydney, Bucharest, Oslo, Stockholm, and Kuala Lumpur.