Abstract: A settlement method similar to a note on condition that a trade between a seller and a buyer can be cashed for the seller with keeping merits of a settlement of the note for the buyer and to enable the seller to provide a sales price of goods reflecting a credit risk of the buyer in the trade with the buyer. The settlement method is achieved by the following process; a bank device owned by a bank makes a response to an issue approval request of an electronic credit note from an intermediary company device owned by an intermediary company intermediating the trade on the basis of a preset upper limit of the trade between the seller and the buyer or of the trade condition. If the issue approval is active, the intermediary company device transmits the electronic credit note to a seller device owned by the seller. The seller device previously manages discount conditions of electronic credit notes for each buyer.

Abstract: An intermediating apparatus connected to a storage management system for financially intermediating the transaction of products includes: a transaction managing unit for managing the transaction by relating a seller, a buyer, and the products carried into the storage by the seller and assumed to be purchased by the buyer to correspond to each other; a settling unit for paying to the seller a buying price of the products calculated on the basis of warehousing information transmitted from the storage management system at the time of delivery of the products from the seller to the storage; and an invoicing unit for notifying a claim to the buyer concerning a selling price of the products calculated on the basis of delivery information transmitted from the storage management system at the time of delivery of the products from the storage, thereby providing a system for encashing the inventory which is determined to be sold.