Articles by deBanked Staff
deBanked Free Open Bar on Long Island
August 24, 2025deBanked is hosting a FREE OPEN BAR for brokers and folks that work in the small business finance industry on Thursday, September 11 from 7-9pm at Tap Room in Huntington. Tap Room is located on New York Avenue right across the street from the Paramount. You can register here. Entry may be conditional upon capacity inside.
BHG Financial Had a Strong Second Quarter
August 22, 2025
BHG Financial had loan originations of $1.5B in the 2nd quarter of 2025, up from 1.2B YoY. The company is 49% owned by Pinnacle Bank.
The company’s trending 30-day commercial past-due rate has been hovering at around 4% since the same time last year while past-due rates on their consumer loans have been in a consistent decline since Summer 2023.
During the Q2 earnings call, Pinnacle CFO Harold Carpenter, said that both production and credit growth have been good this year.
“I think credit has really been the bigger surprise for the year,” said Carpenter, “and we feel like that it looks like it’s pivoted and hopefully, it will continue to pivot.”
BHG primarily serves as a full-service commercial loan provider to healthcare providers and other skilled professionals for business purposes but also makes consumer loans for various purposes.
From the CERN Large Hadron Collider to Funding Working Capital Loans to SMBs
August 20, 2025When deBanked stumbled upon a scoop that DoorDash had begun offering merchant cash advances in late 2021, the tech and financing team behind it had not been on anyone’s radar. That company was Parafin which at the time appeared to be a startup comprised of former Robinhood engineers. But the backstory is a bit more wild because its CEO and Co-founder Sahill Poddar previously worked on getting his PhD by discovering the Higgs boson particle at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. His credentials include a Doctorate (summa cum laude) in Particle Physics at European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva, Switzerland and before that he was a Visiting Researcher for the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Germany. But today, at Parafin, his company makes $10 billion in funding offers to small businesses EACH DAY. The company has now funded more than 30,000 businesses since inception.
Turner Novak at The Peel secured Poddar as a guest on how Parafin came to be and it’s a must watch.
Business Finance Companies on Inc 5000 List in 2025
August 12, 2025Here’s where small business finance companies rank on the Inc 5000 list for 2025 (and if we’ve missed you, email info@debanked.com):
| Ranking | Company | 3-Year % Growth |
| 15 | Parafin | 9594 |
| 206 | businessloans.com | 1862 |
| 669 | Pinnacle Funding | 626 |
| 831 | SBG Funding | 508 |
| 1215 | Essential Funding Group | 359 |
| 1240 | Clara Capital | 352 |
| 1417 | Backd | 306 |
| 1705 | Kapitus | 256 |
| 1719 | Channel | 255 |
| 1756 | Fundible | 248 |
| 2027 | 4 Pillar Funding | 214 |
| 2117 | Biz2Credit | 203 |
| 2293 | Byzfunder | 187 |
| 2671 | Critical Financing | 156 |
| 3081 | Lendzi | 131 |
| 3226 | eCapital | 124 |
| 3508 | ApplePie Capital | 111 |
| 3545 | SellersFi | 109 |
| 3901 | Splash Advance | 95 |
| 3973 | Fora Financial | 92 |
| 3993 | Capital Infusion | 91 |
| 4076 | Expansion Capital Group | 88 |
| 4162 | Shore Funding Solutions | 85 |
| 4206 | Direct Funding Now | 83 |
| 4712 | ROK Financial | 63 |
Bitty Continuing to Perform Well in Q2 2025
August 11, 2025“Our investment in Bitty continued to perform well in the 2025,” said Todd Schwartz, CEO of OppFi, during the Q2 earnings call. “The business continues to add accretive profitability and cash flow to OppFi. Bitty is doing a great job utilizing technology to improve operations and the customer experience, identifying additional growth opportunities in new credit segments and capitalizing on the continued supply/demand imbalance in the small business lending space.”
OppFi holds a 35% stake in Bitty. Their pro-rata share of Bitty’s first half 2025 earnings was significant to their bottom-line.
NerdWallet: ‘AI Answers Are Taking Organic Search Clicks Away’
August 11, 2025NerdWallet, which operates one of the largest online small business lending marketplaces in the US, is experiencing the competitive pressures of AI in real-time. For example, the company has long depended on organic search traffic to generate customers, but Google’s search results now serve more than just links.
“I’d say the story hasn’t changed much since last quarter. Organic search is still pretty challenged,” said NerdWallet CEO Tim Chen during the Q2 earnings call. “What’s happened incrementally is we’ve seen AI-overviews roll out to a much broader swath of queries in recent months, which is resulting in more people getting answers without ever clicking through to websites.”
The company revealed that SMB products revenue of $25 million was down 4% year-over-year, “primarily due to pressures in organic search traffic.”
NerdWallet, however, has also noticed early signs that LLMs are generating referrals for them.
“What’s probably less obvious is that people who click through from LLMs have materially higher intent to transact than people who click through from search engines,” Chen said. “So, while encouraging in terms of that being a new growth channel, it’s still pretty small.”
Square Loans Originates $1.64B in Small Business Loans in Q2
August 8, 2025Block’s merchant financing division, Square Loans, continues to lead the competition. The company originated $1.64B in small business loans in Q2, up slightly from $1.59B in Q1. That puts them on pace for $6.5B for the year and allow them to maintain their top position among small business finance companies that deBanked tracks. Square Loans’ advantage is that its customers repay their loans automatically through their daily Square POS transactions.
Overall, Block CEO Jack Dorsey announced that the entire company is “Back on offense.”
“We had a strong second quarter,” wrote Dorsey in his shareholder letter. “Square GPV grew 10% year over year and Cash App gross profit grew 16% year over year, accelerating as we exited Q2.”
Shopify Capital: Business Loan & MCA Originations Grow, Loss Rates Consistent
August 6, 2025Shopify Capital purchased $1B worth of business loans and MCAs in Q2, bringing the total to $1.8B for the first half of 2025.
“Our capital business continues to grow, supported by recent product innovations that enhanced our suite of credit offerings and expanded our geographic reach, including launching Capital in Germany and the Netherlands,” said Shopify CFO Jeff J. Hoffmeister. “We’ve introduced new tools that give merchants more choice in how they manage and select loan options, providing greater flexibility to meet their financing needs. Note that loss rates have remained consistent with prior quarters. This is about the successful, thoughtful expansion of capital.”
The company is on pace to outperform last year’s estimated originations of $3B. The company held ~$1.6B in business loans and MCAs on its balance sheet as of June 30.
Certain loans and merchant cash advances are facilitated by Shopify and originated by a bank partner, from whom Shopify then purchases the loans and merchant cash advances obtaining all rights, title and interest or discount. deBanked is able to estimate originations from these figures.
