Articles by deBanked Staff
LightSpeed Capital Has Over $100M in MCAs on Balance Sheet
August 5, 2025LightSpeed Capital, the MCA division of LightSpeed Commerce, has over $100M in merchant cash advances on its balance sheet, according to the company’s latest quarterly earnings report. The POS company reported that LightSpeed Capital’s revenue grew 34% year-over-year.
The company’s balance-sheet-driven approach has made them relatively conservative and cautious with originations growth. For example, in the preceding quarter, Lightspeed CFO Asha Bakshani said “There is a lot of opportunity. We can move faster if we wanted to. When we look at our peers, for example, they are giving out 1% of their [Gross Transaction Volume] in merchant cash advance. Lightspeed is well below that. 1% of our GTV would be almost $1 billion in merchant cash advance. So when we think about the opportunity, it’s there. It’s just that in this macro, we want to move carefully on a product like Capital. Like I mentioned earlier, our default rates are in the very low single digits, and we want to keep it there.”
DailyFunder’s Mobile App Returns to iOS
August 4, 2025
DailyFunder’s iOS app is back. DailyFunder 2.0 is now available in the Apple App Store.
The app is a completely new rebuild from the versions that were published in the App Store in 2013 & 2014. Apple’s technical standards forced those versions out of distribution by 2017 and there had been no replacement since. That is until now since DailyFunder recently decided to do a reboot using in-house developers instead of a third party. Given that it’s the first new iteration, consider it a Beta.
DailyFunder 2.0 features:
- The main forum categories
- The Activity Feed
- Make new threads and replies
- PM other users
- Industry news headlines & links
- Advertiser/Vendor directory
- Advertising
What’s not available yet:
- The app for Android (on the list to do)
- The reputation feature
- In-app registration (must do that on the web-based version)
- Perfection (there will be bugs. Please bear with it)
- Ability to edit one’s profile in-app (on the list to do)
DailyFunder has more than 17,000 approved members, making it the largest and most active online small business finance community in the US. The site launched as a forum in 2012. DailyFunder is great for networking, placing a deal, or industry gossip. For questions related to the site or the mobile app, email webmaster@dailyfunder.com.
LendingTree: ‘Small Business Loan Originations Up 40% On Our Platform’
August 1, 2025LendingTree’s small business loan origination volume is up 40% YoY, according to the company’s latest quarterly earnings report.
“In small business, we made a strategic investment to grow our sales force and it has paid off in more business and more efficiency,” said LendingTree CEO Doug Lebda. “I think that small business can be a real growth driver for us.”
Lebda added that profitability had been consistently growing each quarter and that the company was “on a roll.” And part of that is being attributed to staying on top of AI.
“Eighteen months ago, I told our board and our company that we’re going to be an AI first company,” Lebda said. “And today, effectively, all of our employees are using AI in their day jobs, including having enterprise GPT for everyone.”
How SoFi is Approaching AI and Blockchain
July 30, 2025“We’re implementing and testing AI applications across our business from enhancing back office processes like dispute resolution and filing suspicious activity reports to improving how we interact with our members to help them get their money right, and we brought on teams of engineers to drive these efforts forward,” said SoFi CEO Anthony Noto during the Q2 earnings call.
While the company is using other innovative technologies like blockchain to allow customers to move money over crypto rails or to invest in the underlying cryptocurrencies themselves, they also see a role for it to effectively reintroduce peer-to-peer lending/investing.
“As we look further down the road, we see the potential to tokenize SoFi loans to make them more widely available in liquid markets in increments of dollars rather than tens of thousands of dollars such that anyone can invest in loans just like they do equities,” Noto said. “Crypto is a key area of focus for our management team and when we have brought on board significant expertise, including substantial engineering talent to advance these new initiatives.”
Enova on Business Loan Originations Growth: ‘Like Running Downhill’
July 28, 2025Enova originated $1.2B in small business loans in Q2 2025, marking the fourth time they’ve exceeded $1B. When asked how that segment of their business has continued to perform so consistently, Enova CEO David Fisher said that small businesses had a couple of rock solid quarters in a row.
“It’s almost like running downhill,” Fisher said. “It’s not like you’re trying that hard. It just kind of happens. Credit has been incredibly stable…and when you have rock solid credit and you’re in a very strong competitive position, yes, generating origination growth is like I said, kind of like running downhill. It’s not like we’re trying super hard to do it. We just let the business perform the way it was performing.”
Later on Fisher added that “the competitive dynamics on the small business side are more stable. There’s fewer players. We know who they are. Brand matters more. And so that super strong position we have in SMB, I think helps with the stability a bit.”
In regards to how they’ve evolved their approach to TV advertising, Fisher said:
“So ten years ago, we were running a lot of national TV. Now it’s almost all digital TV, where you can almost target city by city and certainly state by state and even different types of groups within those markets. So that all plays into what we do super well because we develop models ‘that the more data focused that we’re looking at, the easier it is for us.’ So TV was never our favorite thing, but if we can target specific states, specific groups, specific times of days, figuring out which types of programming work the best, that’s really amazing for us to be able to plug that all into our algorithms and become more and more efficient with marketing.”
Lastly, Fisher is retiring as CEO to become Executive Chairman effective January 1, 2026. During the call Fisher said that with the business on super stable footing, that it was simply the right time. CFO Steve Cunningham will take over the CEO position.
Coleman Report’s Bob Coleman is Out With a New Book: “Easy Money, Hard Time”
July 18, 2025
Bob Coleman, founder of Coleman Report, the leading provider of information to small business bankers to help them make less risky small business loans, recently authored a book. Titled Easy Money, Hard Time: 19-Covid PPP Loan Fraud Stories, the book dives into “the most shocking cases of PPP loan fraud, exposing the audacity, greed, and recklessness of those who saw an economic disaster as a chance to cash in.”
Coleman has also previously authored PPP Saves Millions of Main Street Jobs During Covid (2022) and Money, Money Everywhere But Not a Drop for Main Street (2011).
Coleman’s premium content trade newsletter began in 1993 and it provides critical analytical information for today’s small business lending professional. They are the largest producer of training courses and webinars for small business bankers.
Bob Coleman will be moderating a panel on SBA lending at the B2B Finance Expo in Las Vegas this October.
Block: Potential JPM Bank Account Data Access Fees Will Have No Impact to Our ‘Borrow’ Model
July 17, 2025Borrow, short-term consumer loan program by Cash App, will not be affected by fees JPMorgan intends to charge fintechs for bank account data access. That’s because Block’s Cash App doesn’t even need the data.
“Across Block we’ve been deliberate in how we’ve built products, leveraging internal data when we can to deliver value to our customers,” the company said in response to the JPM announcement. “For example, to date: the vast majority of Borrow volume has been underwritten using only Cash App data and less than 1% of U.S. BNPL GMV is paid back via ACH. While we can’t comment on the future, historically, our fees paid to data aggregators have been de-minimis.”
JPMorgan Plans to Charge Fees to Fintechs to Get Customer Bank Account Data
July 16, 2025After Bloomberg News revealed that JPMorgan was planning to charge fintechs to access their customer bank account data, CEO Jamie Dimon was questioned about this during the bank’s latest quarterly earnings call. Dimon said that this was a customer-driven decision designed to protect them.
“So we think the customer has the right to if they want to share their information. What we ask people to do is do they do they actually know what’s being shared? What is actually being shared? It should be everything. It should be what their customer wants. It should have a time limit because some of these things went on for years. It should not be remarketed or resold to third parties. And so we’re kind of in favor of all that done properly.
And then the payment, it just costs a lot of money to set up the APIs and stuff like that to run the system protection. So we just think it should be done and done right. And that’s the main part. It’s not like you can’t do it. The last thing is a liability shift. I don’t think JPMorgan should be responsible if you’ve given your bank passcodes to third parties who market and do a whole bunch of stuff with it, and then you get scammed or fraud through them, they should be responsible. And we want real clarity about that. And if you see today, lot of these scams and frauds run through third party social media and stuff like that, there should be a little more responsibility on their part so we could all do a better job for the customer. That’s why.
There’s a debate brewing as to whether or not this move is actually designed to serve the customer. The American Fintech Council (AFC), for example, said that it’s actually designed to accomplish the opposite and that it would hurt consumers and borrowers alike.
“Consumers have a right to their own financial data, full stop,” said AFC CEO Phil Goldfeder. “Any effort to restrict or monetize access to consumer-permissioned financial information is a direct threat to responsible innovation, healthy competition, and the progress we’ve made toward a more inclusive financial system.”
Just a few months earlier, Dimon hinted in a bank shareholder letter that such a move would be defensive and that a fight with the fintechs monetizing their data was on the horizon.
“Banks provide fantastic services, and it’s time to defend ourselves – in the public realm or in court if need be,” he said. “Now a new battle is brewing: Third parties want full access to banks’ customer data so they can exploit it for their own purposes and profits.”
