Having lent a reported £1 million to online retailers since it launched in March 2012, iwoca has secured a £2 million equity investment.

London-based iwoca improves working capital capacities by providing financing based on annual sales and customer feedback scores, factors which it says traditional lenders such as banks to not consider.

The technology start-up was founded by former Goldman Sachs VP Christoph Rieche and ex-Deutsche Bank VP James Dear. It targets businesses selling through platforms such as eBay and Amazon and provides loans of between £100 and £20,000 for a maximum period of three months.

The business name, iwoca, is short for Instant Working Capital and has, to date, been funded by small private investors.

Rieche, co-founder and CEO of iwoca, comments, ‘We are very pleased to have Talis Capital on board, and believe that their experience, combined with the funding will help iwoca grow, providing a valuable service to our existing and future customers.’

Beyond Digital is a Jersey investment company which backs businesses in what it identifies as high growth digital markets. It has a particular interest in crowd/social media, big data and data analytics, cyber security and mobile technology.

Talis Capital, a London-based multi-family office, has advised Beyond Digital on the deal. Vasile Foca, director and co-founder of Talis Capital, adds, ‘iwoca has developed a highly integrated proprietary platform, using big data to provide high resolution credit scoring of e-commerce traders, which we believe makes this a very scalable business in a rapidly growing market.’