The source defines Invoice trading as follows: "when firms sell their invoices at a discount in order to receive funds immediately rather than waiting for invoices to get paid".
The source clarifies the methodology as follows: "Four stages of research activity were carried out from March to September 2014. (1) Stage one involved collecting primary transactional data directly from alternative finance platforms. (2) Stage two consisted of designing and distributing model-specific questionnaires to survey funders and fundraisers of alternative finance. In total 15,658 users were surveyed. (3) Stage three conducted in association with ACCA and PwC included two external national surveys to understand the level of awareness among consumers of alternative finance. 2,007 consumers and 506 SMEs were surveyed. (4) Stage four was the industry-wide tracking survey among UK crowdfunding associations and P2P associations to gather industrial figures for year 2014. Transactional data was collected for quarters one to three of 2014."