Short answers, each one about the platform as it runs today. What a swap is, how compliance and settlement work, what it costs, and how you start.
The platform
Michael is a platform for physical materials swaps. Two companies exchange material instead of shipping it. The difference between the two cargoes is a place, a grade or a delivery time. Michael finds the counterparty, screens both sides, runs the swap through fixed steps and keeps the record. Michael never holds the money and never takes title to the material.
A company ships material to a place where a counterparty already holds the same material. Material sits in the wrong grade or at the wrong time. Each bilateral swap is a one-off negotiation with its own contract, screening and paperwork. The compliance and quality work starts again on every deal. Michael makes the swap a standard process. The parties negotiate the economics only.
A bilateral swap is a project. The two companies find each other, agree the terms, write the contract, check each other and manage the delivery by hand. On Michael the process is the same for every swap. The contracts, the screening, the payment security, the quality verification and the record are standard. The parties decide the material, the quantity, the windows and the price.
A location swap changes the place. Each party delivers from its own stock to the other party's customer. The shipment between the two places never happens. A quality swap changes the grade. Each party gets the specification its customer needs. A time swap changes the timing. One party delivers now and receives material back later.
Yes. A swap can change the place and the delivery time at once. The platform treats it as one swap with two legs. Each leg has its own window, its own documents and its own contract.
Michael starts with chemicals: petrochemicals, base chemicals, plastics and recycled plastics. Minerals, oleo products and agri products follow the same process. A material must have a specification that both parties can verify, and a price reference. Unique items, such as equipment, are not materials in this sense.
Security and compliance
The server enforces anonymity. Before both parties sign, each party sees the other as an anonymised identifier with a trust rating. No company sees another company's positions, customers or prices. The names disclose only when both parties sign the contracts. Michael's operations team sees what it needs to run the swap. The audit trail records every access. The data stays in Michael's own cloud account.
ARCO screens every swap before it moves. It checks each party against the published sanctions lists at screening time. It blocks a trade that touches an embargoed country. In higher-risk regions it checks the beneficial owners first. It runs rule-based checks for chemical regulation on each corridor. A compliance officer sees the decision at four levels of detail, from one line to every check.
The parties. Each leg of a swap is a sale contract between the two companies under the standard transaction terms. Michael is not a party to the sale. The contract names the seller, the buyer, the specification, the delivery window and the documents. VerifyHub verifies the quality. The receiving party approves each certificate of analysis. A measured miss inside the agreed variance band re-prices by formula. A dispute goes through a graduated process that the contract carries from day one.
Yes. Every change of state on a swap is an audit event. Each event carries a link to the one before it. Nobody can change the past without a trace. Every document carries a fingerprint. The operations team can search the trail and export it. At the end of a swap, one deal pack holds the whole record.
Benefits
On a location swap, the parties avoid the freight and the duty of the shipment that never happens. On a quality swap, each party gets the grade its customer pays for. On a time swap, a party gets material now and pays for it with later production. On every swap, the compliance work, the quality verification and the record exist once, for both sides.
It depends on the corridor, the material and the two parties' positions. Michael shows it before you agree. The negotiation panel shows the net benefit of the swap: the avoided freight, the avoided duty, the price difference and the fee. You see the number before you sign.
A location swap removes a shipment, and with it the emissions of that shipment. The swap record carries the sustainability declarations the material needs, for example a deforestation statement for in-scope materials, and the carbon-border threshold check. Michael assembles the evidence. It never certifies emissions.
Getting started
Request a demo. Then apply on the platform with a work e-mail. Your company enters its registration details, its beneficial owners and four document declarations. The platform screens the company and its owners. Michael's operations team reviews the application and approves it. Your administrator adds each member with a role and a trade-value limit. Then you post your first intent. There is no implementation project. After approval you trade at once.
None. Michael is a web application. You sign in with your work e-mail. You need no connection between Michael and your ERP or warehouse system to trade.
At application, your company gives its legal name, registration number, legal form, registered address and VAT number. It also names its beneficial owners. Four documents: the certificate of incorporation or a current commercial-register extract, the beneficial-ownership register extract, the authorised-signatory evidence and the sanctions self-declaration. For each intent: the material, the specification with its tolerance bands, the quantity, the location and the delivery window. You also choose the payment security and the documents you need before release.
The screening is automatic and runs on the day you submit. The approval is a decision by a person at Michael. After approval you can post an intent the same day.
Fees and settlement
A fee per deal. There is no subscription. On a location swap the fee is a percentage of the logistics saving: the freight and the duty the swap avoids. On a quality swap, a time swap or a one-way sale the fee is a percentage of the contract value. A minimum fee applies. Michael never takes a share of the price difference between the two cargoes. Each party pays its fee at settlement. The rate frozen on your swap is the rate that applies to it.
Each leg is a sale with its own invoice. The parties elect the payment security per swap: full cash escrow, partial escrow with a standby letter of credit, or a letter of credit. The release happens when the parties meet every elected condition: delivery evidence, quality acceptance, the documents and the compliance screen. Michael never holds the money. On a time swap, the party that delivers later funds its security in steps.
Screening before any trade. A trust rating on every listing, before you know the counterparty. A performance bond from each side in every security mode. Payment security that releases only on evidence. Trade-value limits and four-eyes approval that your own company sets. A graduated dispute process in the contract. Where insurance cover is mandatory, goods lift only with bound cover.
No. Michael is a platform for physical delivery. Every swap delivers material. A time swap moves delivery timing. It is not a financial instrument.
Technology
Michael runs on a cloud platform in its own account. The records live in a database. A hash-linked audit chain makes the trail tamper-evident. Michael does not use a blockchain. There are no tokens.
You post an intent: material, specification, quantity, location and window. The marketplace shows anonymised counter-intents that fit the material, the corridor, the specification bands and the timing. Each listing shows a trust rating. You negotiate in a thread. The panel shows the net benefit as the terms move.
Use the demo request on this site. You can also write to the contact address in the menu.
Michael's operations team reviews every application and runs the operator steps of every swap. During your first swap, a named person at Michael works beside you.
What Michael never does