Kevin Travers was a Reporter at deBanked.
Articles by Kevin Travers
Forward Financing Gets $250M to Grow
June 4, 2021
Forward Financing announced a $250 million credit facility from one of their current capital providers.
“This is a big win for our business and a testament to our strong financial performance throughout this difficult past year,” said Eugene Wong, Vice President of Strategy and Finance. “The increased facility gives us the flexible capital we need to grow and expand so that we can support the small business economy as it recovers on the other side of the COVID pandemic.”
Forward said it reported growing 60% in the past six months and expected to double the employee headcount in the coming year. The numbers back this up: the firm originated a total of $165,826,203 across 6,142 advances in 2020, a representative said. Forward reached a total of $1B in funding as of March 2021 since the firm was founded in 2012.
Irish E-commerce Revenue-Based Funder Raises $76 Million Series A After First Year
May 27, 2021
An Irish revenue-based e-commerce financing platform called Wayflyer raised $76 million in a funding Series A round this past week. It has been a roaring first year for the small fintech, so far funding $150 million to online merchants. The firm just launched its cash advance product 14 months ago and raised $10.2M in a seed round only six months ago.
Wayflyer offers e-commerce sales-based funding, without the need for collateral, from $10k up to $20M. They partner with firms across the UK, including a recent deal with the international athleisure brand Gym+Coffee.
Left Lane Capital led the round with investments from DST Global, QED Investors, Speedinvest, and Zinal Growth. The successful funding comes after the firm widened its credit facility by $100M to keep up with the demand for capital and a partnership announcement with Adobe Commerce.
The cofounders, Aidan Corbett and Jack Pierse came together in 2019. Back then, Corbett led an online marketing analytics firm called Conjura when Pierse, a former venture capitalist, proposed using analytic tech to underwrite what amounts to digital MCAs.
“Jack came to me and said, ‘You should stop using our marketing analytics engine to do these big enterprise SaaS solutions, and instead use them to underwrite e-commerce businesses for short-term finance,'” Corbett told Tech Crunch. “We just had our heads down and started repurposing the platform for it to be an underwriting platform.”
Launching in April 2020, Wayflyer funded $600,000 in the first month. In March of 2021 alone, the firm did about $36 million in advances.
“So, it’s been a pretty aggressive kind of growth,” Corbett said.
International Payments Firm Lands $125M Series B
May 26, 2021
Paysend, a UK-based international payments processor, landed a $125 million Series B investment round led by London-based One Peak Partners. Paysend said it would use the funds to invest in its infrastructure, cutting the costs of sending funds toward a goal of $5.4 billion in savings towards customers by 2025.
Founded in 2017, The firm focuses on helping consumers and merchants send payments worldwide in any currency. To date, the firm said it had reached more than 3.7 million consumers and firms, connecting 110 countries.
“Paysend’s vision is to develop the next generation integrated global payment ecosystem for consumers and SMEs,” Paysend CEO Ronnie Millar said. “Our innovative technology is connecting 12bn cards worldwide to pay and send instantly anywhere, anyhow. Any currency – we call this Money for the Future.”
Paysend supports connections between 12 billion cards globally across Mastercard, Visa, China UnionPay, and local card schemes and provides over 40 payment methods for online SMEs. McKinsey’s 2019 Global Payments Report valued the untapped card to card international payments market at an estimated $133tn.
“We are excited by Paysend’s enormous growth potential,” Humbert de Liedekerke, a managing Partner at One Peak, said. “Paysend has built an exceptional payments platform by maintaining an unwavering focus on its customers and constantly innovating.”
After Funding Millions, Alt Financier Hosts Funding CEO Challenge
May 25, 2021
Leo Kanell, a funder from Utah, runs the 7 Day Funding CEO Challenge, a seven-day marathon video livestream of inspirational and educational funding content.
“So how [the challenge works] is basically, we’re looking for communities, and we’re building a community,” Kanell said. “Our focus is how can we help existing loan brokers, and then how can we help people who are looking for an additional stream of income that they can do from home obviously with the pandemic.”
All the action happens in a livestream on Facebook.
“Everybody kept asking ‘we need some training,’ so we built out a custom website for them so that they can build their funding empire from home,” Kanell said.
Many of the brand new market entrants are sales-minded individuals that are interested in working from home. Kanell has a sales mind and a small business funding background. He grew up in a family of nine from a small town in Utah with a population of only 3,000. He knew he would be a salesman when he turned a summer painting business internship into a $60,000 operation. After college, he tried his hand at real estate, but after 2008 he started looking for another industry.
“I started and went ‘Well, I’m gonna need money for that business,'” Kanell said. “I started looking at the different options to get financing for that next business venture, and it was very difficult, especially for a new business, especially if you’re a pre-revenue business or you don’t have a lot of sales and or collateral.”
He realized SMB funding was the business he should be getting into so he jumped in with both feet. From there he veered into a business education program alongside products like business credit cards.
He soon said that he was doing well, but he heard the funding industry calling his name. “Everything pulled me back into funding,” Kanell said and he decided to combine his education system toward loan broker training programs. He said many brokers don’t realize startups and pre-revenue bushiness can qualify for 0% for up to 15 months.
Now, Kanell hosts an industry podcast that features financial industry guests, and alongside funding, he looks forward to building a community of broker and funder education services.
“We’re going to not only get you the best funding guaranteed, but we’re going to educate you and empower you along the way,” Kanell said. “They can work as direct funders and keep 100% of the commission, and that if they want us to do the work you know, we can do splits.”
Lawsuit Alleging Google Ad Abuse is Latest Iteration of the Search War
May 20, 2021
Google parent company Alphabet reported a record profit in Q1 2021 of $18 billion, up 162% from 2020. The firm attributes the success to a 32% surge in Covid related advertising sales.
A recent lawsuit from ten US States filed in a district court in Texas would argue that it’s not just a covid based bump in ad sales. According to the WSJ, in response to the lawsuit, Google accidentally confirmed what prosecutors suspected: they run a secret program called “Project Bernanke” that uses proprietary data to win bids on the firm’s ad exchange, netting hundreds of millions of dollars over the years. It amounts to a digital ad monopoly, which has already pushed Google’s parent company, Alphabet, to new highs.
Google’s ad exchange works like a stock exchange for marketing, as enterprises buy and sell placements and seconds of attention within the Google advertising universe. Firms bid on purchasing slots for ads in browsers and videos, and the auctions happen lightning fast in real-time. The lawsuit from ten states through the Taxes district court alleges Google used insider information on what they knew firms were willing to pay, to drive the prices as high as they would go.
Google is both on the buy and sell-side of its transactions and admitted in the papers WSJ saw that the data they mined to inform bids in Project Bernanke was not disclosed to publishers. The papers were quickly redacted and sealed by a judge days after WSJ found the details. The documents also mention “Jedi Blue,” a sweetheart deal between Google and Facebook. Instead of competing with Google ads, Facebook agreed to bid on and automatically win a fixed percentage of Google ad auctions. The deal originated back in 2018 when Facebook announced it was joining a competitor advertising program called “open bidding.” The states’ lawsuit alleges the firms must have made a side deal then, and the leaders of the internet ad market colluded; it’s why a bipartisan coalition of ten states is pushing back.
deBanked has tracked Google’s relationship with funders who use the search engine for marketing their products. After reducing the effetiveness of SEO and forcing most businesses into buying ad space out of necessity, the new lawsuit alleges Google rigged the game for themselves. The House always wins.
Back in 2012, deBanked’s Sean Murray first evaluated the SEO landscape. Google punished blogs that were printing out backlinks by the hundreds, nose-diving the competitive market for SEO rankings.
In 2014, Google’s “penguin algorithm” inflicted further pain.
In 2017, Google outright blocked merchant cash advance as an advertising keyword.
DOJ Probes Fintech PPP Lenders
May 19, 2021
The DOJ has launched a probe into fintech firms like Kabbage for their handling of PPP loan distribution, expressing concern that firms may have miscalculated eligible loan amounts or misrepresented payroll taxes, Reuters reported.
The probe is the beginning of an investigation and does not indicate any wrongdoing. The DOJ is reacting to the concerns from multiple sources since PPP launched that the $780 billion program ran the risk of fraud and misuse of funds.
The PPP lending portion of Kabbage, since spun off and rebranded to K Servicing, made less than 300,000 PPP loans worth $7 billion from April to August alone, according to the website. Based on the original PPP lender guidelines, that could net the firm as much as $350 million in commission for sourcing the loans.
As recently as December, the SBA’s own oversight officer Hannibal Ware found that possibly “over 2 million approved PPP loan guarantees” or about $189 billion in loans were “potentially” not in compliance with the law. Those applications are a piece of the puzzle and may turn out to be not fraudulent at all, but the DOJ is taking steps to make sure.
The SBA compliance rules changed constantly, creating a challenge for many PPP lenders to adapt their automated loan processing while updates came out.
In related news, the SBA began accepting applications for the Restaurant Revitalization Fund on Monday, May 3rd. In the first two days, the organization recorded 186,200 applications from restaurants and eligible businesses from across the country.
“61,700 of the applications came from businesses with under $500,000 in annual pre-pandemic revenue,” the SBA reported. “Representing some of the smallest restaurants and bars in America.
Vaccinated New Yorkers No Longer Have to Wear Masks
May 19, 2021Vaccinated New Yorkers are back, maskless, at 100% capacity. Governor Cuomo went live from Radio City Music hall for a press conference and Twitter announcement to outline the specifics.
“Effective this Wednesday, we’re going to adopt the CDC guidelines and regulations on masks and social distance,” Cuomo said. “If you are vaccinated, you are safe. No masks, no social distancing.”
Effective Wednesday, NYS will adopt the CDC's new mask & social distancing guidance for vaccinated people.
Unvaccinated people should continue to wear a mask.
Masks will still be required on public transit, in schools & some communal settings. Private venues may require masks.
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) May 17, 2021
The new guidelines said you still need to wear a mask on public transportation, on the subways, buses, healthcare facilities, and schools, in nursing homes, homeless shelters, and correctional facilities. Private businesses will still be able to set their own restrictions like no mask, no entry.
“Individual private venues have the ability to add additional guidelines to the state and CDC,” Cuomo said. “For our part, we’re adopting the CDC and saying ‘lets open.'”
Many chains, from Starbucks to CVS, are already welcoming the maskless vaccinated with open arms. The outdoor food and beverage curfew is gone, while the indoor will remain until May 31st.
“Over half the population is fully vaccinated now, but we have more work to do on vaccinations,” Cuomo said. “We have to get back to life, and living, and do it the way New Yorkers do it. We have to do it quickly and robustly.”
17.6 million doses of vaccine have been doled out to New Yorkers. 52.2% of the population over 18 are fully vaccinated, and 61.8% of the over 18 crowds have at least one shot in the arm. The average number of deaths a day from covid is below 20, dropping to just 11 on Monday. With numbers like that, anyone with a vaccine will be free from wearing a mask from now on. Social distancing, inside or outside, is ending. The 50% caps on dining, gyms, and other indoor activities, are also going away.
To prove vaccination at the door, the state created Excelsior Pass- a free mobile app that lets users connect their vaccine to a scannable QR code. Users have to first register their vaccine on the Excelsior website and can use the app to show negative PCR test results.
Ebay to Launch Sales-Based SMB Loans in UK
May 13, 2021
Ebay is launching a small business working capital product in the UK, offering sales-based loans to 300k SMBS through YouLend.
The product, called “Capital for eBay Business Sellers,” offers loans repaid through a percentage of daily sales and a lump sum. A year after eBay first ventured into offering merchant payments services, the firm is joining the likes of PayPal, Shopify, and Amazon by offering a business loan product. Loans will vary in size based on sales volumes, from £500 to £1 million, or about $640- $1.3M.
“Capital for eBay Business Sellers is intended to help plug this gap, giving small businesses quick access to a range of financing options,” Murray Lambell, GM of eBay UK, said. “With 300,000 UK small businesses trading on eBay, this proposition will help them reinvest, protect jobs, and succeed, even as the government’s support schemes dry up.”
The application process will take five to ten minutes, the firm attests, landing funds that same day.
“Our focus is on giving leading e-commerce platforms, tech companies, and payment service providers the ability to offer their customers rapid funding through our technology platform,” CCO of YouLend Jakob Pethick said. “We’re delighted to partner with eBay UK to support their business sellers thrive and grow.”
