Business Lending

Square Generated $4.78B in Business Loans in 2023

February 22, 2024
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blockBlock’s business loan division, Square Loans, had a massive year in 2023, generating $4.78 billion in loans. That was $1.5 billion more than its closest competitor Enova and up from $4.06 billion in 2022.

Data of this sort is becoming harder to come by industry wide. Several publicly traded firms that once highlighted their origination volumes have since sought to minimize disclosure of it. (This is an approximate list of the largest online small business lenders and merchant cash advance providers in the US.) While Square still makes their origination figures available, it warrants no mention on the Block quarterly earnings calls because its impact on the overall business is small. Block generated $21.92 billion in net revenue in 2023 for example, $9.5 billion of which stemmed from its bitcoin business.

BROKER FAIR RETURNS TO NYC – MAY 20

February 15, 2024
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Broker Fair 2024

Broker Fair is BACK! The largest annual conference for small business finance brokers returns to New York City on May 20, 2024. The venue is the Metropolitan Pavilion on 18th Street in Manhattan. This will be the 6th Broker Fair in NYC since it first launched in 2018.

REGISTER HERE

Early bird pricing is now available for a limited time. For questions or inquiries, please email events@debanked.com or call 917-722-0808. Hotel bookings and pre-show information will be available shortly.

You can watch what’s been said at previous Broker Fairs on our new Broker Bites video page.

NACLB Conference Founder Files Chapter 11

February 15, 2024
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Caesar's PalaceKris Roglieri, founder of the National Alliance of Commercial Loan Brokers (NACLB) conference, filed for Chapter 11 on Thursday as his legal issues continued to accelerate. In addition to his primary business Prime Capital Ventures being placed into receivership, numerous lawsuits, and his home being raided by the FBI, yet another party filed suit this morning to say that it had also been scammed by Roglieri after paying him $6 million as an upfront payment for a loan that he then ghosted on. The Receiver in the case believes that victims lost more than $50 million “in what appears to be a multi-state fraud scheme.” He has not actually been charged criminally at this time.

Roglieri’s bankruptcy election was under subchapter V, meaning the debts listed are business debts. Among them is an unpaid bill for $436,237 to Caesars Entertainment in Las Vegas where the NACLB held its last conference this past September. Other debts include a $709,000 EIDL loan, $600,000 in outstanding state taxes, ~$1 million to law firms, and a $100,000 business line of credit for the Commercial Capital Training Group.

Shopify Capital Renewal Rate Greater than 70%

February 13, 2024
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Shopify Capital’s funding business is continuing to gain momentum, according to the company’s latest quarterly earnings. Shopify stopped specifying precisely how much it is originating (perhaps because deBanked kept turning those numbers into posts every quarter for years) but still lists the receivables from its loans and merchant cash advances as a line item on its balance sheet. There the balance increased from $580M to $816 year-over-year.

“We know the capital product has been effective because we’re seeing a repeat renewal rate of over 70%, a testament to our ability to help merchants access the funding they need for growth, particularly ahead of key sale times, including the crucial Q4 holiday shopping season,” said Shopify President Harley Finkelstein during the call.

BusinessFunding.com Sells for $44,000

February 12, 2024
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businesslending.comThe world of domain name investors called out a big sale that took place on GoDaddy over the weekend. The domain is businessfunding.com and it reportedly sold for $44,000, according to Namebio which tracks sales when data is available. The whois information does not reveal who the buyer is at this time.

Other potentially high value domain names in the small business finance industry include businessloans.com and smallbusinessloans.com, each of which are standalone businesses.

Meanwhile:
loans.com was sold for $3 million 24 years ago and today redirects to the homepage of Bank of America.

businesslenders.com belongs to Business Lenders, LLC, which has since ceased its lending operations.

businesslending.com redirects to a bio page for a big real estate broker.

merchantloan.com redirects to Circadian Funding’s website.

revenuebasedfinancing.com redirects to Lighter Capital’s website.

lenders.com is a page that hasn’t been set up yet.

lending.com doesn’t resolve.

How important is a domain name to a business? Important enough that a business can hardly afford to lose one. And did you hear about the first domain name to ever be used as loan collateral over the blockchain? It just happened recently!

Amazon’s On-Balance-Sheet Business Loan Program Steady

February 11, 2024
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amazon truckAmazon’s business loan program was relatively steady in Q4 if its seller lending receivables are any indication. Those receivables totaled $1.3B, which was in line with where it has been throughout 2023. Compared to Amazon’s overall business, which generated $170 billion in sales in Q4 alone, its in-house lending business is rarely if at all mentioned.

Part of this is because Amazon has forged ties with third parties to service large swaths of its sellers. These parties include Parafin, Lendistry, and more recently SellersFi.

“Amazon is committed to providing our sellers with flexible and convenient access to capital, regardless of their size,” said Tai Koottatep, director and general manager, Amazon WW B2B Payments & Lending as part of the SellersFi announcement last month. “Through this lending option with SellersFi, we’re able to strengthen that commitment and offer sellers even more opportunities to grow their business.”

“Working with the Amazon Lending team has been an exceptional experience for SellersFi,” said Leonardo Felisberto, Head of Global Business Development and Partnerships at SellersFi during that same announcement. “Their dedication to empowering sellers aligns perfectly with our mission, and together, we’ve unlocked more possibilities for e-commerce entrepreneurs. We’re hopeful this can be another step toward supporting the growth aspirations of online sellers in the US and beyond.”

PayPal Reiterates Tightening of Business Lending Originations

February 8, 2024
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paypal buildingAfter announcing a sudden pullback on business loans and MCAs in Q3 due to higher than expected charge-offs, PayPal maintained that the belt was still tightened in Q4.

“We have taken a prudent and active approach to managing our overall credit risk, tightening originations within our PayPal business loans portfolio,” said PayPal CFO Jamie Miller on the quarterly earnings call. “We are carrying lower credit receivables after tightening originations last year.”

Tightened originations has led to the company being dethroned as the top online unsecured small business lender. PayPal at the very least held that notable distinction in 2019 and 2020 but they’ve since been overtaken by Square Loans and Enova.

Tech Founder Takes Online Business Loan, Grows Massively

February 2, 2024
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The founder of Testimonial.to took to X to share his story about using a revenue based business loan from Stripe Capital. It worked very well for him. His posts about it are below:

Stripe Capital works similar to how other platforms work in that their product is a loan with MCA-esque features. For example, merchants apply a fixed percentage of their credit card sales toward their loan balance up until the loan is paid in full.