Fifty years after the creation of Factors Chain International (FCI), the worldwide association of 400 factors in 90 countries, this book intends to fill a significant gap: cover a global perspective on the past, present & future of factoring, bringing together excellent historians with the top experts in the field, unifying these specialists around a shared academic and professional approach, producing a single vision of past legacies, current developments and future possibilities. The collaborative Factors & Actors project has been developed and fleshed out step by step. It has never been restricted to any particular region of the world, or any particular context or product. The collective work offered to the reader includes 30 contributions from 37 contributors who, each in their own way, cast a different eye over the birth of the global organization, the origins of such a type of financing, its 50 years of emergence and its future development against a backdrop of ever stricter regulation, compliance and risk management and in an environment of increasing technological innovation. The objective of this project is to increase awareness about a very special financing activity and its numerous virtues supporting the real economy, via both history and geography. Today factoring stands at the crossroads. Ten years after the start of an unprecedented financial crisis, the time is ripe to promote this new form of sound, secure and innovative financing.