I feel a big part of the service that I provide is to educate people about the process of factoring. In an earlier article I mentioned that factoring has been around for a very long time. Factoring got its start about the same time as a lot of other business practices – around the time of the ancient Egyptian civilization. Some sources cite the appearance of factoring practices as early as the Mesopotamian culture. The ancient Romans used a form of invoice factoring where they sold promissory notes on a secondary market at a discount.