How Is Money Borrowed? Direct Finance, Indirect Finance, Trade Finance and the Infrastructure Behind Them
Starting from several financings on a single day, this article uses balance sheets to separate direct from indirect finance, then walks through how governments, financial institutions, firms and households raise funds: where each is issued or traded, where claims are registered and held, and which payment system settles the cash. It closes on trade finance and its pain points: scattered data, duplicate financing, the SME funding gap, and compliance costs.