Articles by deBanked Staff
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.”
NY Bankruptcy Court Rules Funder’s MCAs Were Really Loans
July 28, 2026A judge presiding over an action brought by the Chapter 7 Trustee of the Estate of Kossoff PLLC against an MCA funder, issued a 36-page analysis on Monday that reclassified 19 MCAs (for $10.8 million) the funder made between 2016 and 2020 as loans. The Trustee’s complaint argues that the MCAs the funder made to Kossoff PLLC were criminally usurious and should therefore be deemed void ab initio.
Enova Originated $1.6B in Small Business Loans in Q2
July 27, 2026Enova’s small business loan originations increased 29% year-over-year, coming in at $1.6 billion for Q2. Enova owns OnDeck and Headway Capital.
During the Q&A session of the company’s quarterly earnings call, Enova CEO Steve Cunningham was asked about the performance of their small business loan portfolio.
“I think on the SMB side, it’s been remarkably stable,” Cunningham said. “You can see quarter-to-quarter, we can have some growth variations, but we’ve been very healthy growth. Our net charge-off ratio has been hanging within the 4%-5% range that we would expect every quarter for quite some time.”
Stripe Capital, PayPal Working Capital Could Merge If Acquisition Offer is Accepted
July 19, 2026The old rumor that Stripe was interested in acquiring PayPal was apparently true. Partially anyway. This past April, Stripe, along with Block and Advent (a private equity firm), let PayPal know they were jointly interested in acquiring it. But Block dropped out of the deal and the newest acquisition offer, now public, comes from just Stripe and Advent together. While Stripe and PayPal are obviously known as payment processing companies, the two originate more than $3 billion a year in MCAs and short term business loans a year combined.
PayPal is one of the few online payment platforms to struggle with bad debt in its merchant funding program and the company had never weaponized its lending offerings to grow PayPal’s business. Nevertheless, its origination volume outpaced Stripe’s in 2025. Stripe and Advent offered $53 billion to acquire PayPal. It remains to be seen if a deal will actually happen.
Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Forbes, and More Operate Small Business Funding Referral Marketplaces
July 16, 2026Walmart‘s not the only household brand name that’s running a small business funding marketplace. A cursory Google search shows that the Wall Street Journal, CNBC, and Forbes, among others, are also capturing traffic and earning commissions by referring merchants for business loans, revenue-based financing, and other products.
The WSJ says it earns commissions when merchants click links to apply for revenue-based financing, lines of credit, and other small business loans. “Revenue-based financing might be a good option if you don’t qualify for a business term loan,” the WSJ states on its review page.
Forbes operates with paid placements and links that generate affiliate commissions. The CNBC Select site says that the company earns commissions. WSJ, Forbes, and CNBC compete with other platforms like Nerdwallet, LendingTree, and Bankrate for business loan traffic online.
Meanwhile, Walmart’s business loan marketplace consists of Payoneer, Parafin, Slope, and Uncapped. Three of those partners offer merchant cash advances.
