Small and medium-sized enterprises seeking help with transactions can tap local financial technology start-up Invictus, which is teaming up with IBM.

The firm is using IBM cloud and blockchain technologies for its order, logistics and payment platform, which aims to help businesses process transactions easily, said the technology giant yesterday.

Invictus aims to address wastage, redundancy and cash flow issues in the transaction process, and does this by disrupting the supply chain management cycle with blockchain smart contract technology.

Blockchain is a type of digital ledger with encryption that limits data tampering, and smart contracts are programmable transactions.

Invictus chairman Lim Soon Hock said that through the IBM collaboration, the firm wants to allow secure and cashless financing in a firm's early stages, "by expanding access to financing from third-party liquidity providers, in addition to banks".

That is why Invictus is working with what is called the IBM Bluemix Garage here, to design a platform prototype that manages transactions between SMEs, suppliers, banks and other financial institutions.

IBM Bluemix is the tech giant's cloud platform which offers services such as blockchain to developers, and more than 120,000 apps are released on it each month.

Mr Alan Lim, practice lead at IBM Blockchain and Bluemix Garage in Asean, said: "Blockchain technology presents opportunities for disruptive innovation. It enables businesses to transact with less friction and more trust.

"We are empowering businesses to digitise transaction workflow through a highly secure, shared and replicated ledger."