As the recession continues to take its toll, it is probably worth remembering that, however badly large companies are having it and however intense investor pressure becomes, life is unlikely to be as untolerable as it is in the world of your average SME.

With some corporates indiscriminately extending payment terms, many others simply not paying on time, and still others seeing it as an opportunity to slash costs, with smaller suppliers an easy target, bankruptcies continue to rise.

So it probably shouldn't be surprising that invoice factoring and discounting is proving particularly attractive during these lean times, with smaller suppliers trading in their receivables at a discounted rate in return for faster payment. However, you may not of heard about the Receivables Exchange, an online exchange for trading in, well, receivables which has much the same functionality as eBay and is attracting trades from a variety of investors, including hedge funds.

There's a good article in the Wall Street Journal which goes into some detail on how technology startup Drive Thru Data is using the exchange to, quite simply, survive. Drive Thru is listing its receivables from "big, well-known office-supply stores" and taking a hit on the overall value in return for being paid quickly.

It's no exaggeration to say that Reveivables Exchange is similar to eBay - it even has a Buy It Now function if invoice owners don't want to wait even the time it takes to auction off their invoice asset. But whether it will reach anywhere near the scale of eBay, remains to be seen.

Colleagues from the Procurement Intelligence Unit, a division of the Procurement Leaders Network which will be officially launched in June, met with the Receivables Exchange and reported back that it's a pretty whizzy piece of technology. While the level of trades has to increase significantly for its true potential to be reached (currently, 90% of trading is conducted via the Buy It Now function), they claim that transactions can be completed in less than a day - although within three days is probably more likely.

Working within the large-corporate procurement profession, I have mixed emotions over the success of Receivables Exchange. After all, if everything was equal, suppliers would have their invoices paid quickly, cash flow would remain positive and there would be no need for such middle men.

However, we live in the real world, not in a perfect world - and, because of that, the Receivables Exchange is providing an excellent service to those companies most in need of a pick me up.

Long may it continue.