Has PayPal Eclipsed OnDeck in Small Business Loans?
April 26, 2019
It’s been said that Kabbage is on pace to surpass OnDeck in small business loan originations, but PayPal has already done it.
When PayPal announced a working capital program in the Fall of 2013, few were predicting that the initiative would propel them to the top of the small business lending charts. Just two years later, however, the payment processing giant had already loaned more than $1 billion to small businesses.
Today, that number is over $10 billion, according to a comment made by PayPal CEO Dan Schulman on the company’s Q1 earnings call.
That figure would suggest that they had loaned approximately $9 billion from Fall 2015 to the end of Q1 2019. OnDeck, by comparison, loaned $7.5 billion since Fall 2015 through Q4 2018. Several other data sources, including previous statements from PayPal that they had surpassed more than a billion dollars in quarterly small business funding in 2018 (already more than OnDeck), indicate that PayPal has become #1 on the AltFinanceDaily small business funding leaderboard.
PayPal’s growth was helped in part by its acquisition of Swift Capital in 2017.
Two of the top four are payment processors:
| Company Name | 2018 Originations | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | |
| PayPal | $4,000,000,000* | $750,000,000* | ||||
| OnDeck | $2,484,000,000 | $2,114,663,000 | $2,400,000,000 | $1,900,000,000 | $1,200,000,000 | |
| Kabbage | $2,000,000,000 | $1,500,000,000 | $1,220,000,000 | $900,000,000 | $350,000,000 | |
| Square Capital | $1,600,000,000 | $1,177,000,000 | $798,000,000 | $400,000,000 | $100,000,000 | |
| Funding Circle (USA only) | $500,000,000 | |||||
| BlueVine | $500,000,000* | $200,000,000* | ||||
| National Funding | $427,000,000 | $350,000,000 | $293,000,000 | |||
| Kapitus | $393,000,000 | $375,000,000 | $375,000,000 | $280,000,000 | ||
| BFS Capital | $300,000,000 | $300,000,000 | ||||
| RapidFinance | $260,000,000 | $280,000,000 | $195,000,000 | |||
| Credibly | $180,000,000 | $150,000,000 | $95,000,000 | $55,000,000 | ||
| Shopify | $277,100,000 | $140,000,000 | ||||
| Forward Financing | $125,000,000 | |||||
| IOU Financial | $91,300,000 | $107,600,000 | $146,400,000 | $100,000,000 | ||
| Yalber | $65,000,000 |
*Asterisks signify that the figure is the editor’s estimate
OnDeck Takes Advantage of New Same-Day ACH Technology
April 12, 2019
Same-day ACH is here, thanks to NACHA’s planned upgrade, and OnDeck, a small business lender, has already incorporated it into its platform.
Shaleen Prakash, OnDeck’s Vice-President of Product Management, told AltFinanceDaily:
“We are hyper-focused to get customers faster access to funding that’s already been
approved for them.”
Small business owners can now access up to $25,000 in funding on the same day they book a loan or make a withdrawal.
“As long as the request is made before the cutoff, funds reach the account by 5 p.m. It doesn’t matter if you are in New York or California,” Prakash said. The same-day cuttoff time and the $25,000 limit are also set by NACHA. OnDeck can lend larger amounts, obviously, up to $500,000, but not through same-day ACH.
OnDeck has already processed “millions of dollars over the new rails,” said Prakash. “Anybody who cares about when they get money and when it gets debited back from their account will benefit from this service. If there’s a cash crunch, the predictability and certainty from same day funding are fundamental to managing a business,” he added.
OnDeck’s same-day funding model is two-pronged, working both for accessing capital or processing payments to the online lender. On the cash management side, entrepreneurs gain access to the funds when they need it, even if they forget about a payment due on a Friday morning.
“A small business owner has to pay suppliers on time or meet payroll. Now they can be certain that the funds will reach the account and they will be able to manage cash flow better,” said Prakash.
OnDeck’s same-day transfers are equally important for making payments back to the lender.
“Think about the small business owner dealing with the challenges of managing cash already and how some have cash sitting in their account for three days,” he said.
Meanwhile, if OnDeck says an account is debited on a Wednesday, they really mean the funds are debited from the account on Wednesday.
NACHA, the National Automated Clearing House Association, created same-day ACH transfers in three phases. Phase one and two were limited to credit and debit transactions, which left out some of the small business population. It didn’t make sense for OnDeck to integrate the technology until now.
“Through the process of providing a loan to customers, we collect their account information, so we already have it. Now we can meet their needs of getting funding faster without introducing any new friction to the customers,” he added.
OnDeck, which boasted origination volume of $658 million in Q4 2018, is scheduled to report Q1 2019 financial results on May 2.
Kabbage Could Be Neck and Neck with OnDeck for Originations This Year
April 8, 2019Kabbage funded $600 million in the first quarter of the year, putting it on pace to potentially overtake OnDeck in originations for 2019. OnDeck reported $658 million in originations just a quarter earlier to finish 2018.
The two companies have been among the top three funders by origination volume on AltFinanceDaily’s leaderboard since 2014. OnDeck has consistently been on top with Kabbage and Square solidly in the #2 and #3 slots.
In 2018, OnDeck funded $2.48 billion, while Kabbage CEO Robert Frohwein told AltFinanceDaily that the company originated “north of $2 billion.”
Both companies are expanding.
“We solidified our position as the leading online lender to small businesses in the US, launched ODX, our platform-as-a-service business, and announced plans to scale our international operations and enter the equipment finance market,” said OnDeck CEO Noah Breslow in a 2018 Q4 report statement.
Meanwhile, Kabbage announced in January of this year that it will be powering a program that offers financing to U.S. customers of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.
“Financing at the point of sale requires a fully automated solution that can handle the immense volume of daily transactions that occur on Alibaba.com,” said Kabbage CEO Rob Frohwein. “We are incredibly impressed with the service and value that Alibaba.com delivers to American businesses and want to do all we can to support their important mission.”
| Company Name | 2018 Originations | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 |
| OnDeck | $2,484,000,000 | $2,114,663,000 | $2,400,000,000 | $1,900,000,000 | $1,200,000,000 |
| Kabbage | $2,000,000,000 | $1,500,000,000 | $1,220,000,000 | $900,000,000 | $350,000,000 |
| Square Capital | $1,600,000,000 | $1,177,000,000 | $798,000,000 | $400,000,000 | $100,000,000 |
AltFinanceDaily’s leaderboard omits companies that have not disclosed their small business origination volumes.
Kabbage’s $700 million securitization that was announced today will be used to pay down a previous securitization.
Acquisition Costs Compared for GreenSky, Square, PayPal, OnDeck, Lending Club, and Prosper
March 5, 2019
Greensky, a consumer lending company, wants investors to know how low its acquisition costs are relative to the competition. The chart above, which appeared in their year-end earnings report, showed how much lower their sales & marketing expense ratio is versus Square and PayPal.
AltFinanceDaily examined three additional fintech lending companies and ranked them as follows:
| Company Name | 2018 Sales & Marketing Ratio | 2017 |
| GreenSky | 5% | 5% |
| PayPal | 8% | 9% |
| OnDeck | 11% | 15% |
| Square | 12% | 11% |
| Lending Club | 39% | 40% |
| Prosper Marketplace | 76%* | 72% |
*indicates an estimate
The closeness between Square and OnDeck is notable in that Square markets its payment services first and then offers loans (and other products) as an add-on, while OnDeck only offers loans. Despite that, sales & marketing as a percentage of revenue are still virtually the same for each of them. Square is outspending OnDeck on marketing by more than 10:1, however, and is on pace to surpass OnDeck’s annual loan volume.
Prosper, meanwhile, is doing just as poorly as its wacky ratio looks. The company is losing tens of millions of dollars a year with no end in sight.
Square Capital On Pace to Overtake OnDeck in Small Business Lending
February 28, 2019
OnDeck’s annual loan origination volume has more than doubled since 2014, from $1.2 billion to $2.5 billion, allowing them to retain the top spot in AltFinanceDaily’s small business funder rankings. But Square Capital, the small business lending division of Square, has grown by 16x since 2014. In the course of 5 years, they’ve gone from being a footnote compared to OnDeck to a fierce rival that is rapidly closing the gap in loan volume.
Square’s secret is the ability to generate loan volume at virtually no cost because the product is merely an add-on to their payments-first business. And that’s a problem for OnDeck, because Square has a lot of money to spend on marketing its payments business. More than $400 million a year to be precise. OnDeck, meanwhile, only spent $44 million last year on sales and marketing.
With OnDeck being outspent by a factor of 10, there is a likelihood that Square will overtake OnDeck in the business loan market within the next two years.
And Square’s strength is the ecosystem it’s building. On the Q4 earnings call, company CEO Jack Dorsey said, “I believe the ecosystem is extremely sticky, because it builds durable relationships. If we’re just focused on providing payments in the Register, certainly, there are so many other competitors out there. But when people come in for payments in the Register and then they use [our] payroll for their restaurant and they use Caviar and are really getting offers from Square Capital, it’s really hard to find that mix anywhere else and that builds durability.”
With Interest Rates Up, OnDeck’s Cost of Funds Comes Way Down
February 12, 2019OnDeck’s cost of funds dropped significantly in 2018, according to their last quarterly report. The rate was 5.6% in Q4, compared to the 6.8% it started off at in Q1.
During the earnings call, OnDeck CEO Noah Breslow said, “We improved the terms and structures of our credit facilities and increased the number and quality of our funding providers, adding new banks and life insurance companies.”
That’s all before OnDeck even closed on an $85 million revolving credit facility with a lender group consisting of four banks earlier this month. The rate on that came in at 1 month LIBOR (currently around 2.5%) + 3.00%.
OnDeck’s loan yield in Q4 was the highest its been in the last 2 years at 36.6%.
The company enjoyed record earnings for Q4 2018 ($14 million) and full year 2018 ($27.7 million). They also had record origination volume of $658 million, a 2% increase from Q3 and a 21% increase from Q4 2017. Their sales and marketing expense for acquiring new customers remained flat compared to last quarter.
Trained at OnDeck, LendingFront Founders Help Banks Lend to Small Businesses
January 9, 2019
Yesterday LendingFront announced that it has raised $4 million to help deliver its white label software designed to help banks and other financial institutions lend to small businesses. The company was founded in 2015 by two former OnDeck employees, Jorge Sun and Dario Vergara.
Sun was the Chief Credit Officer at OnDeck from 2007 to 2012 and said he was the company’s third hire. Vergara joined OnDeck as its Chief Technology Officer in 2008 and was also among the first to join the company, Sun said. They both left before OnDeck went public in 2014 and took other jobs before reconnecting to create LendingFront together. Sun said that it is very difficult to create a technology company inside a large bank, which is what he tried to do in his job at Capital One, following his time at OnDeck. Vergara was working as VP of Technology at Bonobos, an online clothing company.
As Sun began talking with Vergara about going out on their own, he recalled telling Vergara: “There are no platforms in this space directly created to help lenders become more efficient…We’ve built this once [at OnDeck], let’s build it again. But the difference now is it’s strictly a technology company. We take no risk, we don’t lend. All we’re doing is powering other lenders.”
Sun said that LendingFront is “lender agnostic,” in that they license out their proprietary lending platform to any financial institution, including banks, community banks, leasing companies and Community Development Financial Institutions.
Their customers pay them a licensing fee and the customer, say a bank, sets its own parameters with regard to underwriting. The platform simplifies the underwriting process, but completely allows for customization and design of the customer experience, Sun said.
The idea of helping banks become better online lenders is not completely unique. In fact, the founders’ former employer, OnDeck, recently launched a separate entity called ODX, with the mission of making banks better lenders to small businesses.
But Sun said that while ODX and LendingFront both help banks, there is a difference between the two. He said the difference is that ODX is more of a full service shop acting on behalf of a bank.
“With us, a bank is using our platform like using Excel…versus [using] Excel and then giving it to a different company and saying ‘use Excel on our behalf.’”
Sun said that customers have funded $150 million through the LendingFront platform since they started licensing it out in 2016. They previously raised $1.6 million in 2016 and they employ 24 people in an office in New York.
OnDeck Expands Canadian Business with Merger
December 5, 2018
OnDeck announced today that it has entered into an agreement to merge its Toronto-based Canadian business with Evolocity Financial Group (Evolocity), an online small business funder headquartered in Montreal. OnDeck will have majority ownership of Evolocity and the combined entity will be rebranded as OnDeck Canada.
“The combination of OnDeck’s Canadian operations with Evolocity will create a leading online platform for small business financing throughout Canada and represents a significant investment in the Canadian market,” said Noah Breslow, Chairman and CEO of OnDeck. “There is an enormous need among underserved Canadian small businesses to access capital quickly and easily online.“
According to the announcement, “the transaction will combine the direct sales, operations, and local underwriting expertise of the Evolocity team with the marketing and business development capabilities of the OnDeck team.”
As part of the merger, Neil Wechsler, who is the CEO of Evolocity, will become the CEO of OnDeck Canada. And the management team will include Evolocity co-founders David Souaid as Chief Revenue Officer and Harley Greenspoon as Chief Operating Officer. OnDeck Canada will be governed by a Board of Directors chaired by Breslow and composed of existing OnDeck and Evolocity management.
Currently, OnDeck offers a variety of loans up to $500,000 and lines of credit up to $100,000. Evolocity offers small business loans and an MCA product, from $10,000 to $300,000. AltFinanceDaily inquired with OnDeck to see if OnDeck Canada will retain the MCA product from Evolocity, but has yet to hear back. Since OnDeck entered the Canadian market in 2014, it has originated over CAD $200 million in online small business loans there. Evolocity has provided over CAD $240 million of financing to Canadian small businesses since 2010.
Investment in online small business lending in Canada is growing. IOU Financial, a Montreal-based small business funder that primarily funds American small businesses, told AltFinanceDaily last month that they made a concerted marketing effort in the third quarter to reach Canadian small business owners. Meanwhile, Thinking Capital, a Canadian online small business funder, announced in July the launch of BillMarket, a service that provides Canadian small businesses with a credit grade (A through E), making it easier for them to get funded.
“BillMarket represents a cash flow revolution for the Canadian small business market,” said Jeff Mitelman, CEO of Thinking Capital, which has roughly 200 employees between its Toronto and Montreal offices.
According to a recent Canadian government report cited by OnDeck in its announcement today, there are 1.14 million small businesses in Canada that represent 97.9 percent of all businesses in the country. Also, small businesses employed over 8.2 million people in Canada, or 70.5 percent of the total private workforce.
Evan Marmott, founder of Canadian small business funder, Canacap, told AltFinanceDaily earlier this year that unlike the saturated small business market in the U.S., the Canadian small business market is still ripe for growth. Not only this, he said that while the market is smaller in Canada, the default rates are generally lower and he found that Canadian merchants do less shopping around. He also said he has seen less fraud in Canada than in the U.S.
“For brokers, while commissions are lower, you could actually speak to business owners who are not being bombarded with calls [as they are in the U.S.] and have a much higher closing rate,” Marmott said.
Evolocity has 70 full-time employees and offices in Montreal, Vancouver and Marham, in the Toronto area. OnDeck has funded over $10 billion to small businesses and became a public company (NYSE: ONDK) in 2014. OnDeck is headquartered in New York.
“We are excited to join forces with OnDeck…to enhance our best in class digital financing solutions to small businesses across Canada,” said Wechsler, Evolocity CEO. “Additionally, this transaction will augment our data science and analytics capabilities to help deliver an unparalleled merchant experience.”
