PayPal, King of The Small Business Lenders?

PayPal didn’t offer precise quarterly origination figures for its “Working Capital” loan product on Tuesday, but it did reveal total originations since 2013. The number? 1.3M loans for a total of $25.6B across the US, UK, Australia, and Germany. Though there is an international component, the totals are higher than rivals OnDeck and Square Capital over the same time period.

“PayPal Working Capital (PayPal Funding Pro) expanded to France and the Netherlands,” PayPal said in its Q2 announcement, “providing SMBs with simple and flexible funding in minutes.”

The company’s small business lending operations draw little attention given that its payment business, which includes Venmo, is so massive. The size of it first became known in 2019 when it offhandedly claimed $4 billion in annual business loan origination volume for the year. That number shrank to $2.6B in 2020 during the pandemic, which was still more than all of its competitors.

In the US, its loans are actually made possible through WebBank.