Industry News
Lendio Plans Development and Growth With $55 Million Series E
February 27, 2020
Today Lendio announced that it raised $55 million as part of its series E funding round. This included $31 million in equity led by Mercato Partners Traverse Fund and a $24 million debt facility from Signature Bank.
“We think that we’re just getting started, that there’s a really large opportunity in front of us and we’re excited that this round will give us the fuel that we need to continue to grow,” Lendio CEO Brock Blake told deBanked in a call. “We have a few different reasons for pulling together the round, but primarily, it’s all around investing in organic growth through partnerships and different marketing channels.”
Asked where these funding rounds may continue in an F, G, and H, Blake was unsure, saying that “every time we raise a round we do it with the expectation that it will be the last round.”
The funds in part will be used to further develop Lendio’s integrated lenders services, which are a set of tools used to identify which loan product and lender are the best match for a business owner; as well as the expansion of Sunrise, the bookkeeping platform Lendio acquired in 2019.
Intuit Agrees to Buy Credit Karma For $7.1 Billion
February 26, 2020
This week the news broke that a deal had been reached between Credit Karma and Intuit that will see the latter purchase Credit Karma for $7.1 billion, paid for with cash and stock. After rumors of the deal leaked over the weekend, the agreement was confirmed on Monday by chief executives from both companies.
Under the deal, Credit Karma will continue to operate as a stand-alone business and its CEO, Kenneth Lin, will stay on and run the company. Beyond that, some believe that the merger will see Intuit rise as a go-to platform for financial services. Owning TurboTax as well as Mint, tools for filing taxes and budgeting, respectively, the addition of Credit Karma, which allows customers to view their credit score for free, would advance Intuit’s product suite as well as bolster the data it already has on users.
“There hasn’t been that much innovation in the financial services world in the past two decades,” Credit Karma Founder and CEO Kenneth Lin said. “The combination of the two companies will really be able to move consumers forward.”
Credit Karma claims to have 100 million customers, with half of all American millennials being included within that number. It also states that it has over 2,600 data points on each customer, including their social security number as well as loan history. The company makes its money by selling customer information to third parties who advertise new credit cards and loans on the Credit Karma site. Credit Karma also receives a couple of hundred dollars for each card and loan that is acquired through ads on its site. Being one of the few tech startups that actually turn a profit, Credit Karma claimed to have received $1 billion in revenue in 2019.
Speaking on the deal, Intuit’s CEO, Sasan Goodarzi, said that “This is very core to what we’ve declared around helping our customers make ends meet and make smart money decisions.”
Luxury Asset Capital Acquires and Relaunches Borro
February 26, 2020
Luxury Asset Capital, the Denver-based lender that secures financing against goods such as Ferraris and Rolexes, has announced this month that it has acquired Borro and will be relaunching borro.com. LAC did not disclose the purchase price.
The news comes after LAC had been in talks to acquire Borro for years, LAC CEO Dewey Burke told deBanked. The merger will see Borro’s New York office remain open for business as many of its staff will stay on. As well as this, LAC and Borro will now be offering loans on a wider range of goods, that start at lower minimum amounts, and which will make use of more flexible terms, Burke stated.
“This was a transformational acquisition for us because obviously the competitor was out of the marketplace, but it really pushed us further to the forefront of being the preeminent lender in our niche space.”
Other news to come from announcement is that LAC is now offering to store customers’ luxury assets in its company vault, allowing the users who choose to do so to access capital immediately via a phone call. LAC will also be retiring its Lux Exchange and Pawngo brands, in favor of replacing them with Borro, because, as Burke put it, “we just thought it was a brand that was stronger than the legacy brands that we had.”
Beyond the merger, LAC plans to continue forging corporate partnerships, like that of its preexisting one with WatchBox, a trading service for preowned luxury watches. The strategy here being to link with the luxury goods ecosystem, enabling convenient pathways for customers to collateralize their asset.
Bitty Advance Has a New Major Partner
February 21, 2020Craig Hecker, who founded and sold Rapid Capital Funding, has acquired a stake in Bitty Advance. According to the press release, Hecker and Bitty Advance CEO Edward Siegel first met more than ten years ago when Siegel had just entered the merchant cash advance industry at Rapid Capital Funding.
Bitty has been on the move. The company has been a regular participant in the networking conferences that deBanked puts on each year.
Siegel says of Hecker in the announcement that “I am thrilled to bring on Craig with all of his MCA experience and his creative thinking to help scale Bitty’s growth.”
The newly-made partners told deBanked that they believe this deal will enable Bitty Advance to leap forward to the next level by adding technology to fund faster and create an industry changing awesome customer experience.
Shopify Capital Originated $430 Million in Loans and MCAs in 2019
February 17, 2020
Shopify Capital, the e-commerce giant’s small business financing arm, originated $430 million in funding through loans and merchant cash advances in 2019. Shopify now has more than 1 million e-commerce merchants on its platform, the company says. Earlier in the year the company began rolling out funding to merchants that are not using its payment service.
Though 2019 year-end reporting for the industry is still sparse, the company’s origination figures will likely cause Shopify to move up the rankings maintained by deBanked.
PayPal, who deBanked predicts will keep its #1 spot, did not disclose its annual origination figures in its already-reported Q4 earnings.
Idea Financial Chimes In On New Hire
February 17, 2020
Last week Idea Financial announced that it had appointed Gregory Sandler as its Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel. Having served as General Counsel to both Beyond Finance and Spruce Finance after working as VP and Corporate Counsel to Bayview Asset Management, Sandler believes he’s well positioned to help Idea.
“I have a sense of gratitude to them, because I feel like I’m piggybacking on a lot of the hard work they’ve already done over the last three years,” Sandler told deBanked in a phone call. “But part of the reason for bringing me on I think is that as we move from a startup to a more mature company certain skill sets are needed, and they put the trust in me that I have the skill set that can help them get to that next level.”
Before providing counsel to alternative finance companies, Sandler served as an Associate Director at Bear Stearns in the mids-2000s.
“We’re about to cross into our one hundred million dollars in funding threshold, which is a big deal, very soon,” Justin Leto, CEO of Idea, explained over the phone. “That’s a major accomplishment, and it just shows that we’re in a position right now where bringing on the strongest and the brightest people is exactly what we need. And I think Greg is a symbol of what this company has become and what it will continue to be.”
We’ve Acquired All Of DailyFunder
February 6, 2020
deBanked’s parent company has acquired 100% of DailyFunder. I was a co-founder of the online forum that launched in 2012 and had remained a partner in it until recently when I had the opportunity to acquire the remainder of the company’s shares.
What does this mean for DailyFunder?
DailyFunder will remain an independent entity and website, and it will continue to keep its trademark name. Its concept, a message board for business finance professionals, will fit nicely into our ecosystem. Our full ownership of DailyFunder will allow us to provide the site with updates, fixes, and improved moderation. Some changes to the site may be implemented over the next several weeks and months.
More than 16,000 threads and 129,000 posts have been published on the forum since inception, a testament to the value that such a site provides to the unique community it fosters. DailyFunder has nearly 10,000 registered members. Discussion on the site originally centered around merchant cash advance but has since evolved to all types of commercial finance.
If you’re one of the men and women who fund daily, well then I hope to see you on the DailyFunder!
If you have a technical question or moderation issue, please email: webmaster@dailyfunder.com. If you have an advertising question, please email me at: sean@dailyfunder.com. Please bear with us as our team gets acclimated to the new change.
Ocrolus Partners with Kiva to Provide Funding and Publish its Customers’ Stories
February 6, 2020
Ocrolus has announced a partnership with Kiva, the Californian non-profit that provides loans to entrepreneurs in countries underserved by funding options. The deal comes after news of Ocrolus’s partnership with Plaid in December, a venture that helped launch the Ocrolus+ platform.
As part of Kiva’s work to help global small business owners, it publishes the stories of those entrepreneurs, charting how they set up their business and what led them to do it. Ocrolus will follow Kiva’s suit with this partnership, as it plans to publish the stories of its own fintech customers. Aiming to highlight the biographies of those businesses and entrepreneurs that have excelled in the alternative finance and fintech industries, Ocrolus will provide $5,000 for Kiva-backed loans for each story published to its site. If the published business chooses to match this funding, Ocrolus will put forward a further $5,000, bringing the total appropriation for Kiva to $15,000.
Speaking on the partnership, Ocrolus’s COO Vikas Dua told deBanked that the inspiration for the deal came after listening to a podcast that featured one of the co-founders of Toms, a company known for its ‘one for one’ policy which sees a pair of shoes being donated to children in need for every pair bought.
“The best part of Kiva is the types of folks you’re helping and the impact you can have. They do a great job of sharing stories of entrepreneurs and folks in need,” Dua said in a call. “Everyone’s incentives are tied together. Overall, we’re just very excited about the mission and very excited not only to tell our customers’ stories, but also to highlight some of the things we’re doing for the folks that Kiva interacts with and they fund. They have some wonderful stories there and we’re excited to share those as well.”
