Dow Protocol, an RWA platform for e-commerce working-capital advances, said on July 28 that it has completed a $9 million seed round, with participation from MH Ventures, OKX Ventures, Animoca Brands, Arcane Group, Essentia Partners, and Quartet Group.
Financing tied to receivables and operating data
The platform serves merchants on major global e-commerce platforms and provides working-capital advances based on sales receivables and real operating data.
According to Dow Protocol, its underlying asset service system is embedded into mainstream e-commerce platforms, giving it direct access to merchants’ original operating data for credit evaluation and risk control. It also said that through cooperation with the platforms, repayments can be deducted directly from the platform side rather than flowing through merchant accounts, a setup aimed at controlling repayment risk from the source and building what it described as a leading collection mechanism in the sector.
Stablecoins used to speed up disbursement
On the capital side, Dow Protocol said it uses the instant settlement capability of stablecoins to reduce the lengthy disbursement process in traditional lending to as fast as same-day funding.
The company said speed itself carries value in the working-capital market, where cash flow is especially sensitive, and that borrowers are willing to pay a premium for that efficiency.
Broader PayFi RWA positioning
Dow Protocol describes itself as a general PayFi RWA advance protocol for broad e-commerce use cases. It said its framework can be extended to supply-chain financing and advance-funding demand across sectors including e-commerce, dining, payments, gaming, and AI computing power.
The company also said it is pushing a model in which working-capital advances are originated natively on-chain, allowing advance terms to be executed in a highly granular and programmable way and reshaping the underlying operating logic of supply-chain finance.