Articles by deBanked Staff
MCA Debt Settlement Owner Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy To Commit Wire Fraud
May 27, 2026
The 2024 arrest of Mark Csantaveri, an MCA debt settlement owner tied to MCA Cure LLC, LDMS Group, LLC, and Evergreen Settlement Group LLC, has resulted in a guilty plea. Csantaveri pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
In the original charges, investigators said that Csantaveri’s debt settlement websites made claims that they had a “proven proprietary debt restructuring system” that could lower their MCA payments by 80%. As part of the enrollment process, merchants were directed to send funds to an escrow account, where the defendant then misappropriated the funds by transferring them to personal accounts.
Csantaveri is facing up to a statutory maximum of 20 years in prison and has agreed to forfeit the criminal proceeds of $2 million.
deBanked first reported on this case in May 2024.
QuickBooks Capital: ~$1.7B Funded Last Quarter, Repeats that AI is Not a Threat, But Rather an Advantage
May 21, 2026
Intuit’s QuickBooks’s capital originated about $1.7B in small business loans in Q3 FY 2026. That brings the total for the trailing nine month period ending April 30 to $4.3B. During the earnings call, Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi said “We are growing our line of credit offerings with buy now, pay later, directly embedded within QuickBooks, and the launch of Intuit business credit card.”
Like other software companies, analysts have been questioning the sustainability of their product offerings as AI looms large as a threat. Like the previous quarter, Goodarzi offered a rebuttal on this subject, expressing that they are effectively the AI solution customers would seek.
“It is important to recognize that businesses, while they use Google, they use LLMs to do searches, do queries, you cannot run your business with an LLM because you are managing your books, you are managing your money, you are managing your payroll, and accuracy and compliance of doing that matters,” Goodarzi said. “And running a business is mission critical. And so psyche of businesses is such that and accountants is that they need us to be their AI platform to provide expertise so they can run and grow their business.” Goodarzi cited Anthropic and OpenAI as partners they are already working with, for example.
Goodarzi also said that winning customers is not necessarily about the best software anyway, but rather about the confidence the assistance with the work instills in the customer. And given the integrations they have, the reputation they have, the AI power that they use, and ability to assist customers, this is where they are actually structurally advantaged.
Deep Search, Merchant Lawsuits, and More
May 19, 2026
The deal came into underwriting and within minutes alerts popped up. The merchant had been sued by an MCA company in 2018. An auto-decline? Perhaps. Or maybe a closer look into the court records would shed light on whatever happened there to see if the situation is manageable, that is if the records are even easily accessible to begin with and the underwriter doesn’t mind parsing through a docket full of filings.
QuickVett will spare you the trouble and cut right to the chase. That lawsuit? A dispute over $3k that happened at the tail-end of a large $100k deal. The outcome? A satisfied settlement. It’ll all be right there in its report. No manual lookup on the case required. QuickVett, which describes itself as a merchant intelligence platform, scans state and federal court records across the US. If there’s a hit involving an MCA it will use an MCA-specific AI analysis to present relevant details to an MCA underwriter. An immediate default is distinguishable from one that happened after a long lengthy relationship, for example. Maybe a conflict arising after the 7th renewal provides clarity that otherwise wouldn’t be readily obvious. Most underwriters are already familiar with NYSCEF but if the deal is not in the New York State court system, it’s not going to be found. QuickVett says they’ll find it wherever it is.
QuickVett also does creative searches on its own, such that it will discover if the merchant’s DoorDash account or e-commerce site has gone offline, for example, or if employees of the business recently updated their LinkedIn accounts to say that they no longer work there. QuickVett also pays special attention to the corporate structure and job title of the officers. For example, in an impromptu trial afforded to deBanked for test purposes, QuickVett’s deep search system discovered a sworn affidavit filed by a business owner in an old court case and compared what he said to public records and his LinkedIn profile about his role in the business. The result was that everything matched. But if it hadn’t, an underwriter might have to contend with why a business owner swore he had partners in an obscure court case but listed himself as the 100% owner on a funding application and proceed accordingly.
Overall, “QuickVett scans court records, background databases, corporate filings, social media, and the web — delivering a complete merchant intelligence dossier in under 5 minutes,” the company states. Its AI systems custom tailor the findings to an MCA-style underwriting process.
Seven Percent of Small Businesses Use MCAs on a Regular Basis
May 15, 2026According to the latest Small Business Credit Survey taken by the Federal Reserve, 7% of businesses with less than 500 employees use merchant cash advances on a regular basis. This was up from 6% the previous year.
For businesses that applied for financing, 12% applied for an MCA, up from 9% the previous year. Forty-eight percent of those applicants said that they got fully approved for one and 12% said they were declined. This contrasts with last year’s figures of 33% and 9% respectively. These charts are compared below while the full 2026 survey report can be viewed here.
It should be noted that the 2026 data reflects a survey conducted from September 2025 – November 2025 for that trailing 12 month period and the 2025 data reflects a survey conducted September 2024 – November 2024.
Square’s Q1 Gross Profit Growth Driven by Square Loans
May 12, 2026Block didn’t divulge the precise number of business loans it originated in Q1 2026 but did say that it grew. deBanked, which tracks online small business lender originations, estimates the number to be ~$1.9B.
“Square gross profit grew 9% year over year in the first quarter, driven primarily by Financial Solutions, most notably Square Loans,” the company said.
Lending has become a significant business for the company across all of its verticals. Consumer lending origination volume growth accelerated to 82% YoY, for example. Its “Borrow” product grew by 300% over that time period.
“Each new Block lending product has scaled originations at a faster rate than the last one,” the company revealed in its earnings presentation. A snapshot from that presentation is below:
LendingTree: SMB Lending Cools Slightly
May 7, 2026“When the war started in March and gas prices went way up, that was a shock to the system in that month specifically,” said LendingTree CEO Scott Peyree. “Now, on the small business lending side, I would say we are seeing a little bit of both—fewer small merchants looking for loans and smaller loan sizes than normal. On the lender side, credit is still available, but they are typically offering lower loan amounts at higher interest rates.”
Peyree believes this will correct on its own.
“When you have a cautious merchant to begin with, and then they are not getting the exact loan they want and at a higher interest rate, the sense we are getting is they are just not as urgently looking for money right now because of macro geopolitical stuff that is going on,” Peyree said. “I still think this is a short-term thing that will go away. Once consumer sentiment comes back up and, hopefully, things settle down geopolitically, I think we will be right back off to the races.”
Revenue from the small business segment of its business, however, was still up 49% YoY and they’ve brought on more people to help these businesses choose a solution.
“We have selectively added to our SMB concierge team to help more customers find the right financing options, while increasing the speed of application submission, approval, and funding,” the Q1 shareholder letter states.
NerdWallet CEO: ‘Distribution is King’
May 7, 2026During NerdWallet’s Q1 earnings call, CEO Tim Chen took a question about the company’s vertical integration strategy.
“High level, the cost of launching financial products is decreasing rapidly, as everything from software to call centers to capital markets is getting more efficient,” Chen said. “Meanwhile, the cost of distribution is going up. That means now more than ever, distribution is king.”
With this in mind, the company is going hard on distribution.
“…we have decided to be more aggressive in placing our long-term bets,” Chen said. “We believe our brand and distribution moats represent a growing advantage as less powerful brands struggle to reach consumers efficiently, while AI simultaneously reduces the cost of offering financial products.”
Chen also said that it’s getting harder for single-product companies to continue competing.
“While this environment is increasingly challenging for newer entrants and single-product companies, our trusted brand leaves us in a strong position to capitalize on our massive consumer reach and distribution network.”
NerdWallet offers both consumer and smb products.
“SMB revenue was 25 million, down 15% year over year, driven primarily by organic search revenue declines in SMB products, partially offset by revenue growth in loan originations,” said John Lee, NerdWallet’s CFO of the first quarter. This downward trend as a result of the changing organic search environment has been a recurring theme for the last few quarters.
New York State Bill Seeks to Criminalize Invoice Factoring, Merchant Cash Advances, and More
May 6, 2026A Senate Bill in New York hopes to rewrite the state’s criminal usury laws to include invoice financing, revenue-based financing, merchant cash advances, retail installment contracts, “or any transaction that in substance functions as the advance of funds in exchange for a future payment or obligation, regardless of the label assigned to such transaction.” S10127, introduced by Senator Rachel May (D), says that the purpose is to ensure “that businesses cannot evade New York’s longstanding usury laws by re-labeling high-cost financing products as services or other non-loan transactions, and to apply existing civil and criminal interest rate protections to covered financing arrangements.”
Any product that falls under these definitions would be deemed criminal if its all-in cost exceeds 25% per annum or the equivalent rate for a longer or shorter period. Depending on the circumstances it would either be considered a Class E felony punishable up to 4 years in prison or a Class C felony punishable up to 15 years in prison.
The bill has merely been introduced and has not yet made its rounds through the legislature. It can be viewed here.
