The ones people actually ask

No. Nobody lends you money. Your buyer signs a promise to pay on a date, and that promise is itself transferable: you can spend it, endorse it onward, or mint it into e-cash. The credit is created inside the trade, not borrowed from outside it.

The buyer. They are the one who owes, so they sign the promise to pay and hand it to the seller. From then on the seller, and every later holder, decides what to do with it.

To issue and endorse bills, no. Settlement happens in Bitcoin: on the Bitcoin mainchain and nowhere else, with no side chain and no token of our own. E-cash is a claim denominated in it, so a bill held to maturity pays you in Bitcoin. Swapping out immediately is a treasury decision, not a protocol one.

No. A bill travels between the parties who hold it. There is no public ledger of your trades, your margins or your customer list. Only the holders of a given bill see its endorsement chain.

The bill is protested and the holder has recourse against every endorser before them, plus an immediate title of execution from the court for the payer’s entire assets, without re-litigating the underlying sale. That is the whole reason a bill outranks an invoice in a payment queue.

Whoever chose to take the bill. The guarantee chain runs in two directions: the parties to the bill stand behind it downstream, the network of mints upstream. The backing is two-deep: every unit of e-cash is fully backed in Bitcoin and Bitcoin-denominated bills, and above that mandatory floor the mint locks separate guarantee capital which is sold to cover you while recovery runs. A scripted remedy transaction pays out if it fails. What Bitcredit does not do is underwrite your counterparty; that judgement stays yours.

A bill states a sum certain, so both sides know the amount from the day it is signed. What that amount buys at maturity is the same currency question you already face on any ninety-day export term. Two things keep it small: these bills are short, thirty to ninety days rather than years, and e-cash is designed to work in fiat units as well as Bitcoin, so a bill can be written in the unit you already invoice in.

No, and the limit is deliberate. Only short-term bills against goods already sold and delivered can be minted, which is the real bill principle. Credit appears when a shipment does and disappears when it is paid for, which is exactly how it fails to inflate. The timing settles it: a bill runs thirty to ninety days, and repayment destroys it long before spending could distort prices. Long-term paper and financial assets are not eligible.

A Wildcat: anyone running the open-source mint software, willing to take a bill before maturity and split it into e-cash: the job specialist houses did for merchant bills. Selling the bill outright to a Bitcoin treasury company is the other route. It is a business, not an office of the protocol, and competing mints quote against each other. The mints are connected, so e-cash from one spends against any other, and where yours was minted does not matter. More on e-cash

No. E-cash is non-custodial: the payment splits into Bitcoin outputs that only your own key can spend, so a mint going under does not touch what you hold. At the maturity of the underlying bill, e-cash redeems 1:1 into outright Bitcoin on the mainchain. The fee is taken once, at minting, and what you hold does not decay afterwards. If the buyer defaults, the mint must sell its guarantee capital and redeem you anyway. And an unpaid bill acts like a red light: it blocks that mint from creating any further e-cash until the guarantee is honoured, so paying up fast is its own interest.

You and the mint. It reflects the time to maturity and how good the names on the bill look. Nothing in the protocol fixes it, and the figures on this site are illustrative, so bring your own quote.

Three costs, and no others: one satoshi per e-cash transaction, flat; the minting fee you agree with a mint if you want money before maturity; and, when you melt e-cash back into Bitcoin, whatever fee that mint sets for it, and the mint sets that one alone, so it is worth comparing before you pick one. No monthly fee, no percentage of turnover, no hidden charges.

Bills of exchange run on the Geneva Convention of 1930, and the UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records followed in 2017. The UK enacted it in 2023, putting an electronic bill on the same footing as paper under the law most trade contracts already choose. The legal picture

Adoption of the electronic-records law is uneven, which is why the place of payment named on the bill matters. Check with counsel for your corridor, and tell us what you find, because we keep track of where the law has landed.

eBills on your phone, a counterparty who has it too, and agreed terms. No onboarding queue, no credit rating, no minimum volume. Open eBills

Nobody you have to contract with. Bitcredit is not a company but an open protocol under the MIT licence, so there is no vendor sitting in the middle of your trade, no subscription, and no account anyone can close. Your agreement stays with your counterparty, and with whichever Wildcat you choose if you mint. The people who build it work with exporters, importers and mint operators directly; a call is the fastest way to reach them.