Corporate Buyer
The big customer who owes the Small or Medium-sized Enterprise (SME). Confirms the invoice with a single click in an email. Light browser portal for batch confirms. Lighter gate set than any other persona — they handle no money, take on no new liability.
Why the gate set is lighter
Buyers don't lend, don't borrow, don't buy a security. They affirm a fact ("yes, we owe this") and pay on a date they already committed to. The risk we're managing is identity and sanctions, not creditworthiness.
- No risk model. A buyer with weak credit gets flagged but is not blocked — the lender prices that risk on their side.
- No source of funds. Buyers aren't moving money toward us; they're paying suppliers as they always do, just to a different account.
- No Money Laundering Reporting Officer (MLRO) mandatory review. Only escalations from Gate 4 (sanctions delta, insolvency) reach the MLRO queue.
- No advance disclosure of the financing arrangement. The buyer is not asked to bless the seller's financing; they're asked to confirm the invoice. The financing happens on FinToken X's side and is invisible to them.
Flow map
| Step | What the buyer sees | Channel | State event |
|---|---|---|---|
| B1 | First-touch email — supplier has just submitted an invoice | BUYER_INVITED | |
| B2 | Account creation + light onboarding (Know Your Business (KYB) lite) | Browser (one-time) | BUYER_ONBOARDING_SUBMITTED |
| B3 | Know Your Customer (KYC) + sanctions complete — ready to confirm | BUYER_ACTIVE | |
| C1 | Per-invoice email — "your supplier asked to be paid early" | BUYER_NOTIFIED | |
| C2 | Magic-link confirmation page — one click | Browser (signed link) | BUYER_CONFIRMED |
| C3 | Batch portal — confirm 12 invoices in one go | Browser portal | BUYER_CONFIRMED ×N |
| C4 | Payment instruction — "pay the invoice to this account on the due date" | OBLIGOR_INSTRUCTED | |
| C5 | Receipt acknowledgment after the buyer pays | OBLIGOR_PAID |
Onboarding · B1–B3
First time only, triggered by the supplier submitting their first invoice to this buyer. Tom Whitfield never sought us out; the email arrives because Coppergate Joinery added tom.whitfield@northwind.co.uk to invoice FX-INV-23A4F.
INVOICE_VERIFIED fires on the seller's side. The pitch is deliberately short.Your supplier wants to be paid early
Hi Tom,
One of your suppliers, Coppergate Joinery Limited (Ltd), has asked to be paid early on invoice FX-INV-23A4F for £10,000.00 (due 21 July 2026).
To make that happen, we need you to:
- Confirm the invoice is real and you'll pay it on the due date.
- Pay it on the same date you would have paid Coppergate, but to FinToken X's account instead.
That's it. You don't sign a finance agreement, you don't take on any new liability. This invoice was already going to cost you £10,000.00 on 21 July. It still does. Only the bank account changes.
Confirm in one clickIf this invoice doesn't look right, click "Reject" inside the page and we'll loop in Coppergate. Never reply with bank details by email.
First time hearing from us? FinToken X is a United Kingdom (UK) platform that helps small businesses get paid early on invoices their customers (you) owe them. We are authorised within the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) / Bank of England (BoE) Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS). Read more.
Quick check before you confirm
We just need to verify Northwind Retail plc and you, Tom. Should take a minute. We never share your details with Coppergate.
Verify your company
Quick identity check
We'll verify your ID with Sumsub. Takes about 30 seconds — passport or driving licence, plus a short selfie.
/partner/onboarding and on the buyer portal.
You're all set ✓
Hi Tom,
Northwind Retail is verified and you can now confirm invoices in one click. The Coppergate Joinery invoice for £10,000.00 is ready for you.
Confirm FX-INV-23A4FFrom now on, when one of your suppliers asks to be paid early, you'll get a one-click confirm email. There's also a list of pending confirmations at your portal.
Per-invoice confirmation · C1–C5
From the second invoice onwards. The whole loop, end-to-end, takes Tom about 20 seconds per invoice.
INVOICE_VERIFIED. Repeat suppliers get a slightly shorter version.One-click confirm
Confirm Something's wrongPDF attached for your records. Confirming says "yes, we owe this and we'll pay on the due date" — nothing more.
ComplianceGateGuard action="CONFIRM_INVOICE".Confirm invoice from Coppergate Joinery Ltd
Northwind Retail plc · Tom Whitfield
What you're confirming
PDF: Invoice-23A4F.pdf (217 KB)
What confirming means
- You confirm the invoice is real and Northwind owes Coppergate £10,000.00.
- You confirm Northwind will pay on the due date — same as you would have anyway.
- You'll get a payment instruction nearer the due date with a different bank account to pay into.
Confirming creates no new liability. You are not entering a finance agreement; you are not guaranteeing anything; you are not blessing the financing.
BUYER_ACTIVE, Gate 4's continuous monitoring is read at the moment of confirm. If a sanctions delta has hit Northwind since onboarding, the confirm fails closed — the route guard returns to a "we need to recheck — please bear with us" state and the file is escalated to MLRO. Server response on confirm: writes BUYER_CONFIRMED with the actor's session subject ID and a hash of the rendered page; immediately fires the seller-side S4 email and triggers token mint; immediately listed on the lender marketplace.
Pending confirmations · 12
Suppliers waiting on Northwind. Confirm to release their early payment.
BATCH_CONFIRM) plus per-invoice child entries linking to it. This matters for Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) filings — if it later turns out one of those 12 was fraudulent, we can show the regulator that Tom confirmed it as part of a batch, not after individual scrutiny, and route blame accordingly.
Pay £10,000.00 by 21 July
Hi Tom,
This is the payment instruction for the Coppergate Joinery invoice you confirmed on 22 May. Please pay £10,000.00 by Tuesday 21 July to the account below — same amount, same date, just to FinToken X instead of directly to Coppergate.
Your usual ledger reference (CG-2026-114) is fine for your records too — but please put FX-INV-23A4F in the bank narration so we match it instantly.
Once we receive the payment, the invoice is fully settled on our side. There's no more contact required from you.
Anti-fraud copy in the footer is deliberate: invoice-redirect fraud is a known UK threat where attackers email AP teams to "update" supplier bank details. The phrase "we never ask for changes to bank details by email or phone" is a counter-pattern.
Received ✓
Hi Tom,
Thanks — we've received Northwind's payment of £10,000.00 against invoice FX-INV-23A4F. Coppergate's invoice is now fully settled on our side. Nothing more for you to do.
For your records: settled at 11:14 on 21 Jul 2026 · Bacs reference NW-2107-FXC.
Browser portal — what Tom sees between confirms
Most buyers will live entirely in email. The portal is a "drop in once a quarter" surface for AP teams who want to audit confirmations and reconcile against their own ledger.
Confirmed invoices · Northwind Retail plc
Everything you've confirmed on FinToken X. Export to CSV for reconciliation.
Where it can go wrong
| Branch | What the buyer sees | State | Knock-on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buyer rejects at C2 | "Tell us what's wrong" form — wrong amount, wrong customer, didn't receive goods, suspicious. Submit free-text + structured reason. | DISPUTED | Seller-side moves to DISPUTED; routed to compliance for review. |
| Buyer's email bounces | Buyer doesn't see C1. | BUYER_NOTIFY_FAILED | Seller is asked to provide an alternate AP contact at the buyer; auto-retry to the alternate. |
| Northwind enters administration | All Northwind-confirmed invoices freeze on the lender side at "Funded but at risk". | BUYER_INSOLVENT | Lender notified; receivable enters insolvency workflow; recovery handled in lender flow. |
| Buyer pays the wrong amount | "We received £9,800 but expected £10,000 — please send the £200 difference to the same account with the same reference." | PARTIAL_PAYMENT | Lender informed; receivable held at FUNDED until full reconciliation. |
| Buyer pays to the supplier's old account by mistake | "We can see Northwind paid Coppergate directly. The invoice was already funded — Coppergate now owes that money to FinToken X. We've contacted Coppergate; you don't need to do anything." | OBLIGOR_MIS_DIRECT | Recovery on the seller side; this is the failure mode that consumes the most ops time, so the buyer-side messaging is intentionally calm and final. |
| Buyer disputes after the lender has funded | Buyer sees a 2-BD response window from compliance. | POST_CONFIRMATION_DISPUTE | Lender's funding stays — they're not exposed to the buyer dispute, the seller is. Recovery from seller wallet or via lender's contractual recourse to the platform fee insurance pool. |
/auth/token, which exchanges the token for a session and forwards to/buyer/confirm/FX-INV-23A4F. If never seen before: the auth/token handler routes Tom through B2 (light onboarding) before the confirm page renders. If known: straight to C2.What we deliberately don't put in this email: any banking detail (no sort code, no account number — buyer pays via the obligor instruction at C4 only); any pricing detail (the discount is none of the buyer's business); any token reference.