Business-to-business obligations
A peer-to-peer network of obligations.
Pistac.io connects buyers, suppliers, banks and enterprise systems around a shared record of what is owed, by whom and when. Businesses use it to structure payment obligations, understand connected exposure, and identify opportunities to net, transfer and settle across trading relationships.
The problem
Obligations are connected in practice, but not in record.
A single payment obligation is scattered across contracts, purchase orders, invoices, delivery records and banking instructions. Each system records a fragment. None maintains the obligation as one connected, structured whole.
- Fragmented records
- Contracts, invoices and delivery notes each capture a piece of the obligation, but no single record connects them all.
- Manual reconciliation
- Finance teams still match purchase orders to invoices to payments by hand, chasing the same information across separate systems.
- Unclear exposure
- Without a connected view, a business cannot easily see everything it is owed or everything it owes across its counterparties.
- Missed coordination
- Offsetting positions between connected parties often go unnoticed, so cash moves that could have been avoided or reduced.
Capabilities
Structure the obligation, understand exposure, act together.
For a participant, this starts with one obligation, structured clearly enough to trust. From there, connected exposure becomes visible, and eligible opportunities to net, transfer or settle can be identified and, where every party agrees, acted on.
Structure obligations
Each obligation is recorded with its parties, agreed terms, acknowledgements and supporting evidence, together with the maturity schedule and the lifecycle events that track it from issue to settlement.
- Agreed terms
- Identified parties
- Acknowledgements
- Supporting evidence
- Maturity schedules
- Lifecycle records
Understand connected exposure
A participant can see the trading relationships, receivables and payables connected to it, along with concentrations and dependencies worth watching, always limited to what participation and granted permissions allow.
- Trading relationships
- Receivables and payables
- Concentrations and dependencies
- Permissioned credit intelligence
Coordinate what happens next
When an eligible opportunity is identified, participants can consider netting, transfer of rights or obligations, novation, or settlement through connected providers, each subject to the underlying agreements and consent of every party involved.
- Eligible netting
- Transfer of rights
- Novation where applicable
- Connected settlement
- Netting
- Netting identifies eligible offsetting obligations among connected participants, so less cash may be required to settle them. It is an identified opportunity, not an automatic cancellation of any obligation.
- Transfer
- Transfer covers the eligible movement of rights or obligations from one party to another, whether for commercial reasons or as part of a financing arrangement, subject to the applicable agreements.
- Novation
- Novation is the agreed replacement of a party or an obligation, carried out only where applicable law allows it and every party has entered into the necessary agreements.
- Settlement
- Settlement connects the status of an obligation with the payment and settlement actions carried out through relevant banking and payment providers. Pistac.io does not hold or custody the funds involved.
An identified opportunity is not an executed outcome. Netting, transfer, novation and settlement proceed only where the contracts, consent of every party and applicable law allow.
The network
What participation adds, from pair to network.
Value starts with a single connected relationship and grows as more eligible relationships join it. Each addition depends on relevance, compatibility and consent, not simply on the number of participants connected to the network.
One obligation, shared
Two participants agree to one obligation record and its lifecycle, covering who owes what, on what terms, and how it moves toward settlement. That value exists at the pair, before any wider network.
Further relationships connect
As further eligible relationships join, relevance, compatibility and consent decide what actually connects. Value does not follow automatically from the number of participants; it depends on which relationships genuinely fit together.
Coordination becomes possible
With enough connected structure, an eligible coordination opportunity, such as a netting, a transfer or a novation, can be identified. If every party involved agrees, it can then be acted on.
A three-party netting example
IllustrativeConsider three companies connected in a circle: Company A owes Company B, Company B owes Company C, and Company C owes Company A, each for 120,000.
- Gross amount to settle
- 360,000
- After an agreed offset
- 0
This figure identifies an offsetting opportunity across the three obligations. Nothing is extinguished unless all three parties agree and the underlying contracts and applicable law allow the offset.
What a participant can see extends only to entities connected to the network and the permissions those entities have granted, not to the network as a whole.
Participants
Who the network is designed for
Pistac.io is designed for four kinds of participant. These are the categories the network is being built to serve, not a list of current members or confirmed customers.
Businesses
Structure and manage obligations
Buyers and suppliers can structure the payment obligations between them, keep evidence attached to each one, and gain a clearer view of the exposure connected to their trading relationships.
Financial institutions and financing providers
Support financing and credit
Banks and financing providers can use structured obligations as a clearer basis for extending credit or working-capital finance, connecting into the network rather than sitting at the centre of every relationship.
Payment and settlement providers
Connect status to settlement
Payment and settlement providers can connect the status of an obligation to the payment actions that settle it, so settlement follows what the parties have actually agreed.
ERP, accounting and enterprise software
Keep systems in step
ERP, accounting and treasury platforms can connect to the obligation record so that the data they already hold stays consistent with its counterpart, without duplicate entry or manual reconciliation.
Foundations
What participation is built on
Participation in the network rests on a small number of clear principles: how obligations are represented, who can see what, and which legal frameworks give that structure effect.
Agreed terms, traced actions
Every obligation reflects terms the parties agreed to, with the actions taken against it recorded and traceable over time.
Role-based participation
Each participant acts within a defined role, with access and actions scoped to what that role is permitted to do.
Permissioned information
What a participant can see is limited to the entities and obligations connected to it under the permissions those entities have granted.
Consistent lifecycle records
Every stage an obligation passes through, from issue to amendment, instalment and settlement, is held as one consistent record both parties can read.
Appropriate legal frameworks
The underlying agreements are designed to work across common-law, civil-law and Sharia-compatible frameworks, for the uses each supports.
Connects to existing systems
The obligation record is designed to connect with the ERP, accounting, banking and payment systems participants already use, rather than replace them.
DTO™, the protocol underneath
DTO™ is the protocol that Pistac.io implements. It provides the common rules and records designed to support consistency across the obligation lifecycle, from issue and acknowledgement through amendment and instalments to final settlement, so that every connected participant reads the same status.
Digital structure does not replace legal substance
Pistac.io does not make an obligation legally enforceable on its own. Its effect still depends on the underlying agreements, the consent and identity of the parties, the evidence held against it, and the law of the applicable jurisdiction. Pistac.io is not a dispute-resolution service.
About
A defined protocol, now moving into practice
Pistac.io is developing the infrastructure behind the Digital Trade Obligation™, or DTO™, a structured way to represent commercial payment obligations. The initial protocol, obligation structure and network architecture have been defined and are now progressing through implementation and validation.
Where the work stands
Defined
- The DTO™ protocol model
- The obligation structure
- The lifecycle framework
- The legal-profile approach
- The network architecture
Progressing
- Technical implementation
- Legal validation
- Selective industry engagement
We would rather be precise about the stage than impressive about it. What is defined is described as defined, and what is under way is described as under way.
Contact
Tell us where your organisation fits.
We welcome conversations with strategic partners and potential participants, banking and financial-services executives, ERP, accounting, treasury and enterprise-software providers, senior advisory partners, and strategic investors who want to help shape where this network goes next.
Explore a partnershipWhat to include
- Your organisation
- The role you would play
- What you want to coordinate
- How best to reach you
This opens your own email client with a message addressed to Pistac.io.