Facebook is rolling out a Fast Track Invoice program on October 1, 2021. You’ve probably heard about it because they are dedicating $100 million to it! The program aims to support small businesses by buying up outstanding invoices owed to them by their customers, so small business owners can get the cash flow they need to keep their businesses running.
This can be a fantastic program if you’re eligible BUT there are a lot of exclusions. We read the fine print so you don’t have to and summarized the eligibility criteria for you here:
- You must be majority-owned, operated, and controlled by racial or ethnic minorities, women, US military veterans, members of the LGBTQ+ community, or individuals with disabilities AND must be certified by one of the following organizations:
- National Minority Supplier Development Council
- Women’s Business Enterprise National Council
- National LGBT Chamber of Commerce
- the National Veterans Business Development Council
- National Veteran Owned Business Association
- Disability: IN
- U.S. Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce.
- You must be a US-based business
- If you sell one invoice with one specific customer, you must also sell all eligible invoices you have with that particular customer (see our note below about the service fee associated!)
- End customers must have an investment-grade rating (B+ or better). This high bar is only achieved by large corporations and government entities
- Invoices must have a minimum value of $1,000
Registration opens up October 1, 2021. While this post covers the restrictions that Facebook mentioned, they did state that “other restrictions may apply,” so it may be a good idea to check for updates regularly. More information about the program can be found here.
Sadly, we think a lot of our customers who serve the community won’t be able to participate in this program. But if that means you, don’t fret – there are still a lot of financial resources available to small business owners. Check out this list – we’ve compiled many of them!
If you do make the criteria, it’s important to know that Facebook will charge you 1% of the value of invoices that you sell, and that the invoices that you send in must be over $1,000 and the invoices must not be past due. Facebook states that even if the invoices you submit meet all of these criteria, “not all submitted invoices will be funded.”
