A Grantham area company is eyeing national success with a new online platform that protects tradespeople from late and non-payments.

Pay the Trades says it the first company in the world to bring peer-review escrow services to the trade industry.

The brainchild of founders Harvey Croft, 23, and Owain Hughes, 23, the service acts as an intermediary between tradespeople and their customers.

Pay the Trades has unveiled ambitious plans for growth. It its rollout plan, it aims to have 10% of UK tradespeople using the service by 2026 and expects to turnover £4.15m within three years.

The Colsterworth-based business, which also has links to Peterborough, Leicester, and Nottingham, plans to employ up to ten people in the coming months as it launches its accounting, legal and customer service teams.

The sole aim of Pay The Trades is to protect both the customer and the tradesperson and hopes to be a positive shot in the arm for the industry.

It will ensure customers receive the quality of work they pay for and protects tradespeople from late and non-payments in the process.

Offering tradespeople and customers a safe, easy and worry-free means of exchanging goods and services, Pay The Trades' payment process provides a unique and much-needed form of income protection for self-employed tradespeople.

Managing director Harvey Croft said: "We're excited to provide this solution to a market of hard-working individuals whose need for payment is overlooked.

"We're also passionate about ensuring customers get the quality of work they are promised and removing 'cowboy' tradesmen from the market by bringing a whole new business process to the trades industry."

Rather than paying the tradesperson directly, customers pay via the Pay The Trades Escrow Service. Once a job is finished, a 14-day holding period follows to ensure the customer is satisfied with the quality of the work and the tradesperson is paid without the hassle of chasing invoices.

If a customer is unhappy with the service they've received, Pay The Trades will settle any disputes by providing a review process, checking the work and offering a refund where appropriate.

After building a successful career in production and logistics, Harvey decided on a career change and began exploring plumbing as a potential option.

It was during this time that he encountered long-standing issues with payment that many tradespeople experienced on a regular basis. Identifying a gap in the market for a platform that could solve this issue, Croft began building what would become Pay The Trades.

The founding team of three includes Owain Hughes, who Croft has worked alongside consistently throughout his career.

Owain continued: "Harvey is somebody that I have known and worked with for most of my professional career. We joined a construction company and climbed the ranks side by side. I always was, and still am, impressed by his determination, passion and dedication.

"Harvey brings all the qualities that you want to see in a founder and business operator; he's passionate, focused and truly committed."

Freelance tradespeople are amongst the hardest hit by the pandemic. According to a 2020 survey by Simply Business, the average cost of the pandemic to small businesses in the construction industry is £12,891.

A more recent survey from Tradify revealed that 66% of British tradespeople said that the pandemic had a moderate to high impact on their business.

As small trade businesses begin to recover from the challenges of the past 18 months, Pay The Trades seeks to ensure that they are paid on time and in full for their services.

Owain added: "The last year and a half of everyone's lives has been made significantly harder as a result of the pandemic.

"Now that the world is opening up once again and tradespeople are working relentlessly, we thought it would be the perfect time to launch our service.

"We hate the thought of people in the trades industry finally being able to work again, but being hit by late or non-payment issues. That's really where we want to make a difference."

Pay The Trades is now officially open for business throughout the UK. For more information visit paythetrades.com.