Articles by deBanked Staff
See You at Broker Fair
May 18, 2025REGISTERED FOR BROKER FAIR? HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:
Broker Fair Preshow tonight at JIMMY at ModernHaus (SoHo) 15 Thompson St, New York, NY. Requires the separate preshow ticket. This event is sponsored by Lendini. All food is Kosher.
Broker Fair conference tomorrow at Tribeca 360 is at 10 Desbrosses St, New York, NY. Checkin starts at 9am.
- Agenda here.
- Lunch is sponsored by Triton Recovery Group who created a curated latin flavored menu. All food is Kosher.
- The post-show reception starting at 3:35 is sponsored by Bitty. All food is Kosher.
See you there!
LEARN FROM THE PROS AT BROKER FAIR
May 14, 2025Here’s some of what you can expect at Broker Fair 2025 on May 19 in NYC! TICKETS WILL NOT LAST
PLUS, hear from:
PLUS, Get dazzled by presentations from:
Read the agenda to see when they’re up!
All food at both the May 18 preshow and full conference on May 19 will be Kosher. |
Texas on Pace to Pass MCA Bill With Broker Registration Requirement
May 13, 2025
The State of Texas is moving toward passing a “commercial sales-based financing” bill that would impact the merchant cash advance industry. Among the key details is an MCA broker registration requirement that would require brokers to get approved by the Office of Consumer Credit Commissioner (OCCC) in order to broker any MCAs to a merchant located in Texas. Brokers would be subject to OCCC oversight and the rules governing transactions with Texas-based merchants would apply regardless of where the broker themselves is located.
Furthermore, The Finance Commission of Texas would have the authority to adopt its own rules “to prohibit certain acts or practices by providers including acts or practices the commission considers unfair.”
The current iteration of the bill, which has already passed the House and is now in the hands of the Senate to confirm, can be found here.
Shopify Continues to Grow its Merchant Funding Business
May 8, 2025“We continue to grow our capital business and have recently introduced several product innovations that give merchants more choice for how they manage their loans, and how they choose among various loan options,” said Jeff Hoffmeister, CFO of Shopify during the Q1 earnings call.
The company had ~$1.4B in business loan & merchant cash advance receivables on its balance sheet as of March 31, 2025. It purchased & originated $805M worth of business loans in Q1, putting it on pace to surpass the $3B total for all of 2024.
“Shopify Capital is a financing program that offers merchant cash advances and loans to eligible businesses based on the store’s location, history, use and interaction with the Shopify platform,” the company states. It is offered in the US, Australia, Canada, and the UK.
OppFi: Bitty performed well in Q1 2025
May 7, 2025“Our investment in Bitty continued to perform well in the first quarter of 2025,” said OppFi CEO Todd Schwartz during the earnings call. “The business continued to drive accretive profitability and cash flow to OppFi. We continue to see significant imbalance between supply and demand for working capital among small businesses. We are excited to be part of Bitty’s growth ahead.”
OppFi owns a 35% stake in Bitty.
During the Q&A, Schwartz reiterated that Bitty was well-positioned despite the uncertainty surrounding tariffs in the current environment.
NerdWallet Q1: Small Business Loan Originations Down, AI Agents Are Referring Them Business
May 7, 2025Small business loan originations were down for NerdWallet in Q1 “as underwriting remained tight and trade policy uncertainty dampened demand.” This is not a new development at the company as it has been publicizing a similar sentiment for some time.
The biggest takeaways from NerdWallet’s regular reports, however, are how the company, long reliant on organic Google search listings for much of its online traffic, is weathering the transition from the online search-ranking era to the AI answer-agent era. Analysts have been asking NerdWallet CEO Tim Chen to weigh in on what they’re seeing and how it’s going. Now, in this latest quarter, Chen says that AI actually appears to be referring them business so far.
“I think as we think ahead to channels beyond Google search, for example, I’d say top of mind for us is the factors that have historically driven success in areas like Google Search seem to be carrying over to other AI driven search engines. So it’s early days here, but compared to our competitive set, NerdWallet receives a really high share of referral traffic from AI sources. So I think big picture, the way I think about it is AI, at its best, helps you find a great answer quickly without a bunch of effort or spam. And areas with simple answers, AI is gonna meet that user need really well.”
– Tim Chen, CEO, NerdWallet
deBanked independently prompted both Grok-3 and ChatGPT-4o to make recommendations to shop for a small business loan and both recommended Fundera among its top answers. Fundera was acquired by NerdWallet in 2020. ChatGPT-4o put Fundera in its top 2 and Grok-3 put them in its top 3. AI-agents are becoming more memory-based and personalized so this experiment may produce different results for others.
On search rankings specifically, NerdWallet’s Chen said that it had taken a bit of a haircut for them over the past year, in part because even search engines are also now delivering AI-based answers at the top of the results.
AI is permeating so much that the transcript of the earnings call that deBanked relied upon for this writeup was also prepared and published by AI.
Merchant Confidential
May 2, 2025Carl Brabander, EVP of Strategy for IOU Financial, will be speaking at Broker Fair on May 19 in New York City. Brabander will be sharing data and tips on how to build trust and win deals in the small business finance industry.
This is a can’t-miss session for brokers. Registration for the full-day conference ends soon. You can sign up here.
Square Originated $1.59B in Business Loans in Q1
May 2, 2025Square Loans, a subsidiary of Block, originated $1.59B in business loans in Q1, according to the company’s latest earnings report. Despite being the largest online small business lender that deBanked tracks, the company spent most of the quarterly call talking about its new consumer lending product, Cash App Borrow.
Square’s Q1 business loan figures puts them on pace to exceed their total volume in 2024, when they hit $5.7B. The subject of tariffs did not arise on the earnings call at all and Block had an overall positive quarter with $190M in net income.
