Articles by deBanked Staff
NerdWallet: “We are in the middle of an AI transition that is changing how people get their answers to their money questions”
August 7, 2026NerdWallet users have traditionally turned to Google to begin their financial journeys. A question entered into the search bar would surface a NerdWallet article, sending users to the company’s site. Now, that behavior is changing.
“We are in the middle of an AI transition that is changing how people get their answers to their money questions,” said NerdWallet CEO Tim Chen during the Q2 earnings call.
As the company has noted in previous quarters, some traffic is now coming from LLMs. While it remains a small share of overall traffic, those visitors tend to convert at a high rate.
“I think intent is extremely high when someone is coming through an LLM in terms of wanting to transact in a marketplace,” said Chen. “It continues to be a pretty small part of our business today, but it’s definitely an area of investment and growth for us.”
Analysts have continued to press the company on the subject. And while Chen has said that “the story is still being written,” he believes enough change has already taken place to provide a clearer picture of where things are headed.
“We’ve already entered a phase where you’ve got billions of weekly active users across major LLMs,” Chen said. “Mass adoption is already taking place, right? I think a lot of the impact that we’ve already seen in terms of our educational content being affected the last three years, has played out. I think we’re starting to see what the future looks like.”
Chen also emphasized that having a trusted brand will be critical to succeeding in this new era.
“The importance of that trusted brand when you’re talking about offering marketplaces and high stakes financial guidance is really front and center,” he said. “I just think we’re really well-positioned there.”
Shopify: “Capital was a larger driver this quarter”
August 6, 2026Shopify Capital originated $1.4B in small business loans and merchant cash advances in Q2.
“Capital was a larger driver this quarter, while loss rates in payments and credit are both at normalized levels,” said Shopify CFO Jeff Hoffmeister during the Q2 earnings call.
Beginning in April of this year, Shopify replaced its MCA product in Canada with a loan product in response to new regulations from 2025. It did not elaborate in the Q2 earnings on what specific regulations those were but it is possible they are referring to the amended national interest rate caps that went into effect on January 1, 2025. In a loan, an annualized percentage cost is determinable and controllable from the time the contract is made, whereas there is no predetermined controllable annualized rate on an MCA. Shopify disclosed that the main impact from switching from MCAs to loans in Canada was how it booked them in their financial statements.
Square Loans Continues Streak of Low Loss Rates
August 6, 2026“Square Loans are underwritten on data banks can’t see and serve sellers banks won’t. Our loan cohorts have had loss rates of less than 4% through every cycle we’ve seen,” said Block CEO Jack Dorsey in his Q2 shareholder letter.
Square Loans has led online small business lenders in originations for a while, bolstered mostly by its massive captive POS ecosystem, but solidified with the performance of those loans. Some of those loans are held on balance sheet while others are sold to third party investors.
Shopify Capital Transitions From MCAs to Loans in Canada
August 5, 2026“In 2025, Canada amended regulations that impacted merchant cash advance products,” Shopify said during its Q2 earnings. “As a result, we transitioned our Shopify Capital product in Canada, from merchant cash advances to loans which are accounted for under ASC 310, starting in April 2026.”
For the entirety of the quarter and for all geographic areas, Shopify Capital made $1.4B in loans and MCAs through a bank partnership.
LendingTree: “Using AI as a Communications Tool With the Consumer is Very Exciting.”
August 3, 2026“I think using AI as a communication tool with the consumer is very exciting,” said LendingTree CEO Scott Peyree during the Q2 earnings call. “For example, we develop a lead. Instead of sending that lead out five times and having five different brokers call the consumer a bunch, it’s like first have that—whether it’s voice or text or email—have that AI agent engage and communicate with the consumer a little bit first to get a little further detail on it.”
The substance of that conversation would be to clarify what type of factors are the most important, and then directing them to one or two companies that are best suited for that rather than to five.
“That’s a dramatically better consumer experience, and it’s a really useful way to use AI from a consumer-facing perspective,” said Peyree.
LendingTree: SMB Lending Business Softened in Q2, Merchant Sentiment Shifted
August 3, 2026“Performance in July gives us confidence that Q2 was our trough and we have entered the recovery period,” said LendingTree CEO Scott Peyree during the Q2 earnings call.
LendingTree’s SMB business underperformed in the quarter, driven by “both merchant sentiment and lender pullback.” It attributed this to tension in the Middle East, energy price spikes, and more, but concluded that the merchant sentiment issues, which have been slower to recover, were macro-driven and temporary.
“I will say the lenders have largely come back and are writing and offering loans at similar levels to early Q1. Merchant sentiment does remain soft,” said Peyree. “The long-term macro outlook for the SMB industry remains very strong, in our opinion. We’re seeing some encouraging signs already; Improving closing rates, larger loan requests, favorable underwriting shifts. July will be our best sales month since Q1.”
LendingTree does not make loans itself, it connects prospective borrowers with the proper partners that can do that. This business has been very lucrative and had been growing 40% year-over-year on average until now.
“This was our growth engine,” said LendingTree CFO Jason Bengel. “Like I said, it was growing 40% a year on average. Now for this year it’s looking like we might be flat to down. The good news is that should really be temporary. There’s nothing structurally wrong with that business. We operate very well in that business, and the market opportunity is really strong. That will recover. Once merchant sentiment returns, that will return to being a very strong growth driver for us. We’re very optimistic with small business.”
Lightspeed: Merchant Cash Advance Business Key to Delivering Long-Term Shareholder Value
July 31, 2026“For us, it’s really about where we are investing to deliver long-term shareholder value,” said Lightspeed CFO Asha Bakshani during the company’s FY Q1 2027 earnings call. “For now, that is really the Merchant Cash Advance business and returning cash to our shareholders through buybacks.”
Lightspeed described MCA as a “high-margin business” that has grown for them by 56% year-over-year.
“Aside from the potential share buyback, our largest use of cash will be the continued growth of our Merchant Cash Advance program,” Bakshani said. “There were $160 million in MCAs outstanding at the end of the quarter, and we intend to continue expanding this high-margin program over time. As we grow the program, we remain disciplined in our underwriting, and default rates have stayed consistent in the low single-digit range, which gives us confidence to continue expanding.”
SoFi: We Think We Can Take Significant SMB Lending Marketshare
July 29, 2026“We’ve expanded our offering to include our new SMB loan product and have agreed to terms on a three-year, $3 billion agreement with BasePoint Capital,” said Chris Lapointe, CFO of SoFi during the company’s Q2 earnings call, who later added that there was also another undisclosed party working with them on this for several hundred million dollars. SoFi’s foray into direct business loan origination was announced a month ago after spending years referring customers to other parties using a platform it built.
“The SMB business is one that we think we can be incredibly competitive on, similar to personal loans and credit cards,” said Anthony Noto, CEO of SoFi during the Q&A session. “Most SMB lenders are charging exorbitant rates of over 30%. We think we can operate meaningfully below that and take significant market share.”
Small business lending was a recurring theme and question during the call so Noto explained the genesis for how they even first started thinking about it.
“SMB really was born out of the fact that a large percentage of our members actually are small business operators,” Noto said. “Back during COVID, when the government provided PPP loans, we got a significant amount of demand for applications on PPP loans, even though we were not in the SMB business. We actually stood up an application process that met the government’s application criteria and helped pass on that demand to lenders. Then on the back of that, we built a marketplace so that we actually get paid for that referral process that we’re doing. The SMB business is very much synergistic to the rest of our business. I would think of it as just another use case for an individual to satisfy the needs they have from a borrowing standpoint. We’ll obviously follow this up with checking and savings in SMB, and other products that are ancillary to that. It will add to the flywheel.”
