Industry News
Total Merchant Resources Launches Wholesale Funding Division, Secures $20 Million in Private Equity
December 1, 2016Dec 2, 2016 / Piscataway, NJ – An old name in the industry is now a new kid on the block with wholesale. Total Merchant Resources in Piscataway, NJ announced today that it is finished with a first round of funding and has secured $20 million in private equity. This new designation allows TMR to quickly and easily service ISO’s from coast to coast via its wholesale funding division, TMRNOW.
“We are thrilled to open our very successful funding platform to the entire industry. In addition, TMR is now perfectly positioned to do business in California since we are one of the few in this space to obtain a California lending license.” said TMR Co-Founder and CEO Jason Reddish.
Reddish and co-founder Val Pinkhasov, who were featured on CNBC’s ‘Shark Tank’, were among the very first business lenders to enter this space. They are a respected name in the industry and, thanks to their major prime time TV appearance, have brought attention to this underutilized model for businesses to obtain working capital.
“Funding on the retail side all these years, we understand where funders have failed in the past and being that our money is completely private, we have no one to answer to in regards to underwriting. We create our own programs and common sense pricing. We look forward to being a name that ISO’s can trust on every level and making common sense, in house decisions” says Val Pinkhasov President of TMR.
Both Reddish and Pinkhasov have several decades of finance experience and have helped thousands of businesses achieve their goals. They are now excited, in a properly regulated fashion, to do so in on the wholesale side. Please visit TMRNOW.COM for more information.
For more information call Gary Lane (212) 220 9872.
Shakeup at CAN Capital – CEO and 2 other Execs Put on Leave of Absence
November 29, 2016Update 11/30 7:30 pm: CAN says they are still open for business and still providing access to capital for current customers and renewal business. They are not actively seeking new business at this time, but will evaluate it as it comes in.
CAN Capital has confirmed that CEO Dan DeMeo has gone on a leave of absence. The company’s chief financial officer Aman Verjee and chief risk officer Kenneth Gang have also reportedly stepped down. Parris Sanz, the company’s Chief Legal Officer, has been made acting head of the company, while Ritesh Gupta has been promoted to COO.
A statement from CAN Capital is below:
“As the board and our leadership team conducted our business reviews and looked at how we can best position the firm for future growth, we self-identified that some assets were not performing as expected and that there was a need for process improvements in collections. It became clear that our business has grown and evolved faster than some of our internal processes. As we work to improve these processes, the Board has named twelve-year CAN Capital veteran and senior executive, Parris Sanz acting head of the company and promoted Ritesh Gupta to COO, while Dan DeMeo, CEO, and two other members of his team are on a leave of absence. Over the past 18 years CAN Capital has consistently made decisions to position ourselves for growth and leadership in the industry and we look forward to helping small businesses succeed for many years to come.”
Some of CAN Capital’s referral partners have reported to us that the funding of new deals has been put on hold until January 2017. This could not be confirmed, however. (Update: This was later confirmed)
More than just an industry leader, CAN was founded in 1998 and is widely regarded as the first merchant cash advance company. A year ago, deBanked featured Dan DeMeo and CAN in a story to mark their success. As of April this year, they had funded more than $6 billion since inception. In August, they secured a coveted partnership with Entrepreneur Magazine.
Having secured a $650 million credit facility last year led by Wells Fargo, they are the second largest player in the alternative business finance industry behind OnDeck.
Sanz joined the company in 2004 with more than 12 years of experience as a corporate, securities, and transactional attorney. Before joining CAN Capital, he was a senior executive and General Counsel of a specialty pharmaceutical company, the successful sale of which he led in 2003. Prior to that, Sanz was an attorney in private practice at the law firms of Latham & Watkins in Los Angeles and Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker in San Francisco, where he handled a wide variety of M&A transactions, securities offerings including IPOs, and other corporate transactions, and acted as outside general counsel to a number of technology start-ups.
Sanz received his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1993 and a Bachelor of Arts degree from U.C. Berkeley, High Honors and Phi Beta Kappa, in 1990. Sanz is admitted to practice in California and Washington, D.C., is a registered In-House Counsel in New York, and is also admitted to practice before the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
Brief: LendIt Brings First Fintech Awards to the Industry
November 28, 2016
Marketplace lending conference LendIt, has announced the first fintech industry awards and is inviting nominations to recognize top-performing companies and executives.
Nominations are now being accepted (closes December 21st) for 18 different categories including executive of the year, fintech woman of the year, emerging consumer lending platform and most innovative bank. The award ceremony will be held during LendIt’s 2017 conference in March.
“The lending industry is entering its 2.0 phase, after maturing in 2016,” said Peter Renton, co-founder and chairman of LendIt in a statement. “As we seek to connect the global online lending community and foster innovation and industry growth, we must recognize those that are making the biggest contributions and innovations and moving our industry forward.”
The entries will be judged by a panel of 30+ industry experts including Gilles Gade, CEO of Cross River Bank, Glenn Goldman of Credibly, and Angela Ceresnie, COO of ClimbCredit.
CapFundNow Launches Funding Platform for ISOs and Agents
November 27, 2016Hauppauge, NY – November 28, 2016 – CapFundNow.com has launched an online platform and portal that is bringing Funders and their offers direct to the ISO and Agent. This concept is taking the funding industry by storm. The platform was created to help streamline the funding industry by allowing the ISO and Agent to submit a deal through an online platform and have the industry’s top funders make offers through the portal.
According to managing partner Elliott Levine, “you spend countless hours submitting deals to funders through multiple platforms and email addresses. You become exhausted and it’s grueling wasting valuable time submitting deals to multiple funders. It’s impossible to keep up to date with each funder’s niche and guidelines as they can be revised and modified daily. CapFundNow was designed specifically with the ISO community in mind, giving them large-scale access to the industry’s best funders with a simple one-click platform. Our intention was to allow a seamless transaction approach from ISO to funder, allowing them to communicate directly while retaining their full commission.”
Why spend your valuable time submitting deals to multiple funders when CapFundNow will do it for you? CapFundNow has teamed up with the industry’s best to bring you a seamless funding experience. CapFundNow will submit your deals instantly to the industry’s top funders allowing them to compete for your business. You will have the capacity to review and compare multiple offers within the portal. This will allow you to concentrate on the most viable part of your business; sales and servicing your clients. CapFundNow will do the rest by bringing the funders and offers direct to you.
CapFundNow is a completely free service exclusive to the ISO and Agent. You receive the same commission as if you were working hand in hand with the funder. Your full commission is paid directly from the Funder.
Contact Information
CapFundNow – Where Funders Compete!!
Clientservices@capfundnow.com
300 Wheeler Rd.
Hauppauge, NY 11788
(888) 285-6665
Online Loan Middleman Just As Culpable As the Lenders, Federal Court Rules
November 21, 2016A CFPB lawsuit against a payday loan lead generator survived dismissal last week, despite the US Court in the Central District of California acknowledging the company’s role as a “middle man” in the lending process. T3Leads and several people connected to the company are alleged to have deceived consumers, in part such that “they allowed consumers to be exposed to lenders that could cause them substantial harm.”
The court ruled that T3Leads was a service provider as contemplated by the Consumer Financial Protection Act and is therefore bound to the laws therein. The case will now proceed to discovery.
Notably, the court also agreed with the recent opinion of the D.C. Circuit in finding the CFPB’s structure unconstitutional. Nonetheless they did not believe the remedy was to toss this case or prevent the CFPB from carrying out its operations. Instead, they ruled that the CFPB’s director must report to the President of the United States to come into compliance with Article II of the US Constitution. The CFPB has refused to comply and is already appealing the D.C. Circuit’s decision.
The CFPB’s quest for power however, may come at a cost. That’s because President-elect Trump has pledged to repeal and replace the Dodd-Frank Act, the law through which the CFPB’s power is vested.
Despite the Consumer Financial Protection Act’s exemption on vendors that simply provide advertising space, a decision Google made earlier this year to ban all payday lenders could have something to do with their fear of being labeled a middle man and covered service provider.
Don’t Write Off Marketplace Lending Just Yet; Silicon Valley Just Made a Big Bet
November 18, 2016
Don’t lose all hope on marketplace lending yet. Silicon Valley just made a big bet on one startup.
Silicon Valley’s leading venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz invested $15 million in PeerStreet, a marketplace for secured real estate loans. PeerStreet was founded in 2013, by former Google employee Brett Crosby and former real estate attorney Brew Johnson, who oversaw the sale of travel website VirtualTourist to Expedia/TripAdvisor for $85 million. The Manhattan Beach, CA-based company’s crowdfunding platform offers investors secured real estate loans that it sources from local real estate lenders across the country.
“This round of funding will help us further execute on our goal of building a world class investment platform for real estate debt,” said co-founder and CEO Brew Johnson.
To date, it has funded over $165 million in loan investments with $50 million in returns to investors and has 50 lenders on the platform. The company has secured funding from marquee Silicon Valley investors including Michael Burry of The Big Short fame who predicted the 2008 subprime crisis and Adam Nash, former CEO of Wealthfront. Alex Rampell, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz and co-founder of consumer lending Affirm Inc led the investment and will take a seat on PeerStreet’s board.
“They (PeerStreet) have a unique distribution model that allows them to leverage existing lending networks to lower loss rates, and grow without direct marketing,” said Rampell in a statement.
Marketplace Lender P2Bi Raises $7.7 Million In Venture Funding
November 18, 2016
Denver-based crowdfunding marketplace lender, P2Binvestor has raised $7.7 million in Series A1 funding led by a Colorado-based angel investor network, Rockies Venture Club and a Japanese venture firm Future Venture Capital Co, its first investment outside Japan.
The P2Bi platform currently has 150 investors – both institutional and retail and it plans to fund 112 new borrowers, up from the current 80 borrowers, by Q1 next year. The proceeds will be used to boost sales and marketing efforts and grow the company’s operations towards this target.
Founded in 2012, P2Bi provides revolving lines of credit of up to $10 million to businesses. With an average line of $1 million, the company’s customers include businesses in retail, manufacturing and consumer goods packaging. It has originated $350 million since 2014 and it is on track to hit $8.2 million in revenues this year.
“We’re seeing more interest in our model as venture funding hits a two-year low and more entrepreneurs are looking for ways to grow their business while preserving their equity using good-quality, flexible debt,” said CEO Krista Morgan in a press statement.
P2Bi has been bullish about fundraising and diversifying its capital sources. Less than two months ago (September 20), it closed a $10 million credit facility with Pittsburgh-based mortgage service company Urban Settlement Solutions and in April this year, through a partnership with New York-based hedge fund, MW Eaglewood Americas, the company raised $50 million in debt.
Prosper Files 10Q, Revenues and Originations Shrink
November 17, 2016
The slight delay with Prosper’s 10-Q filing is over. The company originated $311.8 million in loans in Q3 versus $445 million in the previous quarter. Revenues were $24 million, down from $28 million in Q2.
The filing delay was said to have been attributed to a recent arbitration decision. That decision and financial impact were disclosed in their report. “On November 17, 2016, Prosper and Colchis [one of their earlier loan buyers] entered into a Settlement and Release Agreement, pursuant to which Colchis has agreed to terminate the Colchis Agreement and waive all rights conferred under such agreement in exchange for a $9 million cash payment by Prosper and equity. Prosper expects to make the $9 million cash payment in the fourth quarter of 2016.”
$9 million is a lot for Prosper who reported only $31.8 million in cash on their balance sheet.
The company has run up a $70 million loss on just $108 million in revenues so far this year, compared to a $17 million loss on $140 million in revenues for the first 9 months of 2015.
Revenues in Q3 year-over-year are down by nearly 60% while originations are down by more than 70%.
Earlier this week, Prosper’s CEO, Aaron Vermut, and executive chairman, Stephan Vermut, both stepped down from their posts.
