The Future of Freight Payments is Credit

Freight and logistics software has digitized the front office: instant load matching, live tracking, automated routing, scheduling, and exception management. A wide variety of platforms are transforming the industry:

• Transportation Management Systems (TMS) orchestrate shipments from pickup to delivery.
• Freight Marketplaces match loads with available capacity in seconds.
• Brokerage Platforms streamline carrier relationships and settlement.
• Spend Management and AP/AR Automation digitizes back-office workflows.
• Digital Forwarding and 3PL Platforms connect global supply chains with a few clicks.

Together, these platforms have become the connective tissue of modern logistics.

But one thing remains unsolved: B2B payments.

Invoicing is fragmented. Terms are negotiated shipment by shipment. Funds crawl across asynchronous rails (ACH, wires, checks, cards). In B2B payments broadly, processing a single invoice takes double-digit days, average terms have stretched to more than a month, and nearly half of invoices end up past due.

In freight, those problems are magnified by accessorial complexity, POD disputes, and the sheer number of counterparties per load.

Why Freight Payments is Uniquely Messy

A single shipment can spawn multiple versions of “truth”:

• Rate confirmation (what was promised).
• BOL & tracking data (what actually happened).
• Invoice with accessorials (detention, layover, TONU, lumper, fuel surcharge indices, reconsignments, and more).

Combined with invoicing and payments headaches:

• Lack of standardized workflow. One shipper runs EDI, another sends PDFs, another demands portal uploads, another forwards photos from the yard.
• Non-standard transactions. Pricing is contract-specific, time-variant, and loaded with rules. Exceptions are the norm, not the edge case.
• Scale pressure. A mid-sized broker might pay hundreds of carriers. A global shipper may manage thousands of vendors. Error rates that look small on paper compound into massive working capital drag at network scale.

At the core, payment workflows don’t address the fundamental problem.

Here’s the tension at the heart of freight:

• Shippers want to optimize Days Payables Outstanding (DPO).
• Carriers need cash now to fund operations.
• Brokers are stuck in the middle, trying to facilitate these complicated transactions.

In freight, platforms are trying to address these issues with partial data, manual handoffs, off platform factoring, and disparate workflows - leading to long reconciliation cycles, constant disputes, and chronically late payments.

OatFi: Embedded Credit for Freight & Logistics

OatFi plugs directly into the platforms that run the industry - TMS, freight marketplaces, brokerage platforms, AP/AR tools, digital forwarders, and 3PLs. We provide the credit and capital markets infrastructure that turns payments from a bottleneck into a growth engine.

What changes on day one:

• Carriers → Early Pay and Guaranteed Payments. Funds at delivery or milestone-based, plus alternative setups like guaranteed payments on due dates with rewards for staying in-network.
  
  
• Brokers → Increased Liquidity. We eliminate the mismatch between shipper terms and carrier payouts by providing flexible working capital.

• Shippers → Dynamic Net Terms. Flexibility without pushing risk downstream. Finance teams gain predictability, while carriers gain trust.

• Platforms → A frictionless, modern payment experience. Your product becomes the source of truth for the invoice, the credit decision, the ledger, and the movement of funds.

How we do it

1. Real-time credit decisioning and underwriting. We underwrite counterparties and transactions programmatically using network data, not just paperwork.
   
   
2. Funding and origination. We finance the gap so carriers can be paid on delivery while shippers take 30/45/60. This is not factoring tacked on at the edge; it’s the default behavior of the network.
   
   
3. Ledgering and reconciliation. OatFi’s programmable ledger and loan management systems provides line-level remittance data. 

What this unlocks for each player

As transactions move through OatFi-powered platforms, the network compounds: liquidity deepens, alignment improves, and trust grows.

• Carriers: Predictable cash at delivery, less reliance on off-platform factoring, fewer disputes.
  
  
• Brokers: Scale without balance-sheet strain; fewer exceptions, faster close, stronger carrier retention.

• Shippers: Industry-standard payment terms and stronger relationships with in-network carriers.
  
  
• Platforms: Higher transaction volume, payments monetization, sticky networks, and a defensible moat.

The Freight Industry Finally Gets the Financial Infrastructure it Needs

OatFi turns invoicing and payments into a competitive advantage - closing the transaction loop, collapsing cash flow conversion cycle, and removing the operational drag.

Credit solutions like Carrier Early Pay and Shipper Net Terms aren’t features - they’re workflows foundational to how customers pay and get paid.

If you’re building or running a TMS, marketplace, brokerage platform, AP/AR tool, or digital forwarder, it’s time to plug into the network that’s already powering the future.