Articles by Press Release
The Commercial Finance Coalition Applauds Actions by the Federal Trade Commission and New York State to Thwart Bad Actors in Business Lending
June 11, 2020
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the office of New York State Attorney General Letitia James have filed formal actions against two small business financing companies for allegedly using egregious and deceptive tactics to seize assets from small businesses, non-profits, religious organizations, and medical offices.
“The Commercial Finance Coalition whole-heartedly applauds the efforts of the FTC and Attorney General James. As a coalition of responsible financial services companies committed to funding small businesses, the CFC believes there should be zero tolerance for bad actors and deceptive practices in our industry,” said Executive Director Dan Gans.
Gans added, “Hopefully this will serve as a warning to all companies in the business finance space to serve merchants through best practices centered on respect and integrity in compliance with state and federal law.”
The CFC is a not-for-profit alliance of innovative financial technology companies that are working together to deploy capital to help small and mid sized businesses grow.
Press Release
Contact
Dan Gans
626-755-6545
Release Date
June 11, 2020
CFG Merchant Solutions Enhances Partnership with Arena Investors and its Affiliates to Serve SMEs
May 29, 2020NEW YORK, New York., May 29, 2020 — CFG Merchant Solutions (“CFGMS”), a leading financier of small and medium-sized enterprises (“SMEs”), announced today that the company is building upon its partnership with Arena Investors, LP (“Arena”), in conjunction with Ceteris Portfolio Services (“Ceteris), an Arena servicing affiliate, in servicing and providing liquidity to Platinum Rapid Funding’s (“PRF”) merchant portfolio. CFGMS has been a leading capital provider to SMEs and an originator of advances to growing merchants, providing in excess of $400 million merchant cash advances since 2015. Arena has been CFGMS’s primary capital partner since 2016.
CFGMS and Arena are determined to prioritize the needs of PRF’s existing customers in the wake of the COVID-19 crises and its resulting impact on small businesses across the country.
“Arena is pleased to continue its partnership with CFGMS and its senior management team consisting of CEO, Andrew Coon, Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel, Robert Martini, and President, William Gallagher. Together, we remain deeply committed to serving the needs of PRF’s existing customers, particularly for ongoing financing and liquidity needs in an environment when even much larger businesses struggle to attract capital,” said Victor Dupont, who leads Arena’s investments in the financing of the SME sector. “We welcome further involvement with PRF’s customers and their affiliated ISOs and are committed to working collaboratively with all throughout the COVID-19 crises and beyond”.
“Arena and its affiliates have built a reputation as a group that combines uniquely flexible capital with broad-based expertise in servicing, resolutions, and SME finance,” said Coon. “So, while we excel at sourcing, originations, and underwriting, we felt that they brought a critical level of IP and know-how that is uniquely suited to benefit all parties in today’s environment. Combining forces to offer a broader set of servicing solutions to the MCA market segment made complete sense.”
Jonathan Pike, CEO of Ceteris, added: “Ceteris is excited to work with CFGMS and Arena by offering best-in-class servicing strategies and assisting merchants in a difficult economic environment.”
The Small Business Association (“SBA”) estimates that traditional banks still reject approximately 90 percent of SME loan applications. Since 2015, CFGMS has emerged as a proven platform that leverages sales partner relationships, analytics, and proprietary underwriting to provide SMEs with a straightforward and streamlined access to critical funding. The company addresses the fundamental capital needs of SME owners across a broad credit spectrum and through every stage of a business’s life cycle.
SMEs across a wide variety of industries that include restaurants, retail stores, salons, spas, dry cleaners, auto body shops, and professional offices. All of these businesses, and more, rely on CFGMS to secure the necessary capital they need to grow.
For questions or funding solutions, please contact:
– William Gallagher
– (646) 880-3817
– WGallagher@CFGMS.com
– Ryan Banda
– (856) 545-8322
– rbanda@ceterisassetsolutions.com
About CFGMS
Headquartered in New York, NY, CFGMS specializes in providing financing to support the growth and development of underserved small-to-medium sized businesses that lack access to traditional bank funding. Founded in 2010, CFGMS’s affiliated company, CapFlow Funding Group, provides factoring, purchase order finance, and asset-based lending solutions. CFGMS and CapFlow have together provided over $1 billion in liquidity solutions to their SME clients. For more information please visit www.cfgmerchantsolutions.com
About Arena Investors, LP
Arena Investors is a privately held, SEC-registered, global alternative investment firm which combines mandate flexibility, proprietary sourcing and systems-plus-servicing to enable solutions for those seeking capital. The firm was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in NewYork with additional offices in Jacksonville, London, and San Francisco. For more information, please visit www.arenaco.com.
About Ceteris Portfolio Services
Ceteris is a nationally licensed servicing company providing debt recovery solutions and other related services for consumers and commercial businesses across a broad range of financial assets. Ceteris provides first- and third-party revenue cycle management, business process outsourcing and portfolio backup servicing to heavily regulated, high volume industries including banking, automotive finance, credit card, equipment leasing, medical, telecommunications, utilities, retail and other industries. For more information please visit www.ceterisholdco.com.
DataMerch.com to Release Updated Version 2.0 of Online Database
March 10, 2020Tampa, March 10th, 2020 /DeBanked/ — DataMerch.com, an online underwriting database for the alternative financing industry, announced they will be releasing version 2.0 in March 2020. DataMerch has designed a refreshed look of the site with improved the functionality. DataMerch took these steps to position themselves for better scalability as their database record count continues to grow past 40,000.
“We’re launching the new version of DataMerch to improve the scalability and features for our funder members,” said Co-Founder Scott Williams. “The new version will allow us to add new features and make changes quicker than before.” When asked what will be different about version 2.0, Mr. Williams responded, “We have a new updated look that I think our members will appreciate. We’ve automated the recent suspicious activity alerts that will now be viewable from the dashboard. We’ve also added an analytics tab that allows our members to see their number of searches, hits, entries, and more. This will allow our members to see in real time the business benefits of DataMerch and their contributions.”
DataMerch leadership say they will continue to invest in developing the functionality of DataMerch and add features that are relevant to their members. They plan to add billing and invoice functions, bulk automated uploads, and updated API version in 2020.
About DataMerch
DataMerch LLC was founded in 2015 to help funders in the alternative financing industry make informed underwriting decisions. DataMerch members can screen their applications using DataMerch’s specifically designed FEIN search and enter unsatisfactory businesses into the database. DataMerch currently has over 100 industry-leading subscribed members working together as a community. DataMerch can be accessed at https://www.datamerch.com and contacted for membership at support@datamerch.com
Kabbage Launches Kabbage Insights™, Allowing Small Businesses To Take Control of Their Cash Flow With Just a Few Clicks
March 4, 2020ATLANTA – March 4, 2020 – Kabbage, Inc. today launched Kabbage Insights, a fully automated tool that calculates and predicts cash-flow patterns to help small businesses identify cash surpluses and deficits. With the launch, Kabbage addresses one of the most vexing problems faced by small business owners. The new product comes just one month after the public launch of Kabbage Payments™, continuing the company’s rapid innovation to build a suite of integrated products that simplify cash-flow management for U.S. small businesses.
In less than 10 minutes, any small business can connect their real-time financial data to Kabbage Insights and access an analysis of their company’s historical, current and future cash-flow 24/7. The product continually evaluates the transaction activity of a customer over a 90-day period and organizes it in an easy-to-understand dashboard, allowing customers to quickly visualize their net growth without taking the time to calculate it themselves. Kabbage’s customer base of over 220,000 small businesses has immediate access.
As a leader in predictive analytics and artificial intelligence for small businesses, Kabbage Insights produces personalized forecasts to predict the future cash position of a business. Customers can then set a desired low-balance threshold and receive automated alerts if accounts are predicted to dip below it, empowering small businesses to identify, act upon and prevent cash deficits before they occur.
Paired with the Kabbage Small Business Revenue Index, Kabbage Insights is also the first product available that allows small businesses to compare their company’s performance to similarly-sized businesses operating in their state and industry. The result is an unparalleled cash-flow tool that’s free for small businesses, helping them to anticipate changes, benchmark their growth, plan ahead and make more confident business decisions like when to cut expenses, invest or borrow.
With Kabbage Insights, small businesses can:
- Review cash-flow on the go via the intuitive mobile dashboard.
- Analyze daily performance and review money movement at a glance.
- Borrow strategically with forecast data to inform funding decisions.
- Save time, as studies show 91 percent of small business owners spend as many as 20 hours per week manually calculating cash flow.
“As a small business owner for many years, I spent many sleepless nights trying to figure out whether I’d have the cash to pay my various expenses, including payroll at the end of the month and it’s been a mission of mine to solve this ubiquitous problem for all small business owners ever since,” said Kabbage CEO Rob Frohwein. “Kabbage is pleased to launch Insights, taking on this burden for small business owners and providing them with cash flow analyses that large enterprises have at their fingertips. We will continue to level the playing field for the small business owner.”
About Kabbage
Kabbage, Inc., headquartered in Atlanta, is a data and technology company providing
small businesses cash flow solutions. Its suite of products includes Kabbage Payments, helping small businesses get paid and access the money they earn faster, Kabbage Funding, providing access to flexible lines of credit in minutes, and Kabbage Insights, a powerful and predictive tool to calculate cash flow. To date, Kabbage has provided more than 220,000 U.S. small businesses access to over $9 billion of working capital. Kabbage is funded and backed by leading investors, including the SoftBank Vision Fund, BlueRun Ventures, WildCast Venture Partners, Thomvest Ventures and others. All Kabbage U.S.-based loans are issued by Celtic Bank, a Utah-Chartered Industrial Bank, Member FDIC. Kabbage Payments, LLC, a subsidiary of Kabbage, Inc., is a registered Payment Service Provider/Payment Facilitator sponsored by Fifth ThirdBank, N.A., Cincinnati, OH. For more information, please visit www.kabbage.com.
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Funding Metrics Announces New $100 Million Revolving Credit Facility
March 4, 2020
Bensalem, PA, March 4, 2020 – Funding Metrics, LLC (the “Company”) announced today the closing of a new $100 million revolving credit facility with a multi-billion dollar institutional credit fund. The Company will use the funds to expand and accelerate the growth of its small business funding platform. Brean Capital served as exclusive financial advisor to the Company on the transaction.
“We are very pleased to announce this new $100 million facility, which will allow us to significantly expand our ability to provide funding to the growing small business community across the United States,” said Co-Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, David Frascella. “This new facility represents an exciting milestone in our continued growth. Funding Metrics has tripled its origination volume since 2017, totaling over $500 million since company inception. I am very proud of the robust funding platform our team has created, the strong relationships we have developed with our independent sales organization partners, and especially the trust placed in us by our merchants. Funding Metrics has created a best of breed technology based platform allowing most funding offers to be sent in under three hours.”
Additional capital provided by the facility will allow Funding Metrics to capitalize on growth opportunities in 2020 and beyond as well as on the extensive infrastructure of people and technology it has built over the last few years. Mr. Frascella added, “We look forward to additional submissions from the ISO network and funding the next wave of small business leaders nationwide.”
About Funding Metrics
Funding Metrics is a leading data and analytics driven online provider of funding for small businesses throughout the United States. The Company uses proprietary risk models combined with real-time cash flow data to evaluate business performance and provides growth capital for entrepreneurs in a fast and efficient way through its two online brands, Lendini and QuickFix Capital. Since 2014, the Funding Metrics has provided over $500 million in funding to more than 9,500 small businesses in all 50 states. The Company is headquartered in Bensalem, PA, with additional offices in Jersey City, NJ and San Jose, Costa Rica.
For more information, please visit: www.fundingmetrics.com
For more information / questions / interview requests / media inquiries, please contact:
David Frascella
Email: info@fundingmetrics.com | Phone: 855-212-6610
Craig Hecker Acquires Stake in Bitty Advance
February 21, 2020
Fort Lauderdale FL – February 21, 2020: Craig Hecker has acquired an equity stake in Bitty Advance.
Hecker is a pioneer and leader in the merchant cash advance industry who founded, grew, and sold Rapid Capital Funding.
Bitty Advance CEO Edward Siegel first crossed paths with Hecker in 2009 when Siegel was employed by Rapid Capital Funding. Siegel since then went on to launch Bitty Advance in 2017 to cater exclusively to small businesses that generate less than $100,000 in annual revenue.
Hecker will be providing valuable thought leadership and capital to help Bitty continue to grow and become the leader in the space.
“I am thrilled to bring on Craig with all of his MCA experience and his creative thinking to help scale Bitty’s growth,” Siegel says.
The start of the partnership was memorialized with a video, attached below.
About Bitty Advance
Bitty Advance was founded in 2017 and is based in Fort Lauderdale, FL. To reach the company, call 800-324-3863 or email partners@bittyadvance.com.
TBF Financial buys $100 million of charged-off loans, leases and merchant cash advances from fintechs, banks, lessors
January 14, 2020DEERFIELD, IL, Jan. 14, 2020 – Commercial debt sales by fintech lenders, equipment leasing companies and banks are on the rise, with major companies striking deals to sell non-performing loans, leases and merchant cash advances after charge-off, reports Brett Boehm, CEO of TBF Financial.
TBF closed transactions in December totaling $100 million. The three largest deals were with a leading e-commerce company that acquired and liquidated a merchant cash advance business; a captive leasing company that provides financing for transportation equipment and other assets; and one of the 20 largest banks in the nation.
“One reason for the rise in commercial debt selling is the tremendous growth of online alternative lenders,” he explains. “As their business originations have increased, so have the number of accounts that eventually default. By selling commercial debt at charge-off instead of spending years trying to collect it, they can put that money back into making loans and merchant cash advances where they generate a much better return.”
“Other lenders and lessors also recognize that it is more productive to concentrate on their core business rather than chase collections past charge-off,” he adds. “Selling commercial debt provides immediate cash and allows collections personnel to focus on accounts that are more likely to be recovered, earlier in the past-due cycle.”
While the December deals may additionally reflect the eagerness of companies to bring in cash before year’s end, Boehm says prospective deals in the pipeline remain high in January, and he anticipates a busy first quarter 2020.
About TBF Financial
TBF Financial is the leading purchaser of non-performing equipment leases, commercial bank loans, online small business loans and merchant cash advances in the U.S. Founded in 1998, the company buys commercial accounts up to four years old from the date of last payment. This includes equipment leases, loans and lines of credit that have personal guarantees, no personal guarantees, are secured, unsecured, pre-agency, post-agency, pre-litigation, and reduced to judgment. For more information, visit tbfgroup.com or contact Brett Boehm, CEO at bboehm@tbfgroup.com, 847-267-0660 or via LinkedIn.
Media Contact:
Carla Young Harrington
Susan Carol Creative for TBF Financial
540.479.7835
Merchant Cash Advance Industry Pioneer David Goldin Launches Lender Capital Partners To Provide Financing To Merchant Cash Advance / Alternative Business Loan Providers
November 5, 2019
White Plains, NY – November 5, 2019 – David Goldin, one of the merchant cash advance industry pioneers who founded one of the first US merchant cash advance providers in 2002, Capify (formerly known as AmeriMerchant), that later expanded to the UK and Australia has partnered with a subsidiary of Basepoint Capital, a seasoned specialty finance group, to form Lender Capital Partners (http://www.lendercapitalpartners.com). Basepoint has provided over $300 million in committed financings / forward flow purchases in the merchant cash advance / alternative business loan industry.
Lender Capital Partners (LCP) provides MCA and alternative business lending platforms with strategic capital including:
- Forward flow programs – LCP funds 100% of the amounts disbursed by the platform in connection with their funding of advances / business loans including sales commissions to their customers to free up cash and avoid the burden of equity requirements or “hair cut” money associated with traditional asset-based credit lines.
- Participations / Syndication – by having LCP purchase a participation in larger deals, the platform is able to offer larger size approvals to their customers and brokers / referral partners without taking on concentration risk. LCP can participate up to $1 million in each deal and provide strategic capital by offering our many years of industry experience underwriting larger size deals.
- Credit facilities – LCP provide credit facilities for MCA and alternative business loan providers that begin at a minimum of $20 million and can go up to $100 million+. Our credit facilities typically offer a higher advance rate than a bank and less stringent concentration limits.
- Broker Graduation Program – LCP will allow brokers to take the next step of becoming a direct lender by providing the capital and know-how needed to fund deals on their own. Designed for brokers that can originate a minimum of $500k/month, LCP can provide the capital needed and set up brokers with one of our partners to provide a back office if needed for underwriting / servicing without having to make the investment on their own.
- Point of Sales / Credit Card Processor Merchant Cash Advance / Merchant Financing Program – LCP can provide a turnkey solution for POS / Credit Card Processing companies to offer a merchant financing program to their merchants to compete with some of the larger POS providers / credit card processors that are now offering these programs in-house and have had great success. LCP can provide the capital needed for a merchant financing / merchant cash advance program as well as introduce one of our underwriting/servicing partners if needed.
“After exiting the US MCA business in 2017, I have decided the time is right to offer my 17+ years of global MCA / business lending experience to the industry by partnering with Basepoint to supply capital to the MCA / business loan industry. I believe the various programs we offer at Lender Capital Partners are tailored for just about any company in the industry – for both current lenders as well as larger brokers/ISOs that are looking to graduate to the next step of becoming a lender as well as to POS providers / merchant acquirers looking to offer an in-house program to their merchants. And my 17+ years industry experience is a great value-added benefit that very few lenders, if any can bring to the table”, says David Goldin, a principal of Lender Capital Partners.”
About LENDER CAPITAL PARTNERS
Lender Capital Partners provides capital to commercial lenders, particularly in the merchant cash advance / alternative business loan industry. One of the founders of Lender Capital Partners is David Goldin. David is the Founder of Capify, one of the first merchant cash advance providers in the US founded in 2002. David scaled Capify to 225 employees operating in 4 countries and sold the US business to a competitor in 2017 and secured a $95 million credit facility with Goldman Sachs to fund Capify UK and Capify Australia which has over 125 employees total today operating in each of those markets. David has over 17 years experience in the merchant cash advance / alternative business finance industry and is considered a pioneer in the industry. David’s extensive expertise allows Lender Capital Partners to bring strategic value to our relationships, not just capital. For more information on Lender Capital Partners, visit http://www.lendercapitalpartners.com
