PayPal Hints At Renewed Support For Small Biz

It’s official: PayPal is now its own company. But that doesn’t mean the payments giant won’t be working with other businesses. In fact, new reports said PayPal is set to strengthen its collaboration with the small business community and boost its SME funding efforts now that it’s off and running apart from eBay.

PayPal first launched its small business funding operations in 2013 with the introduction of PayPal Working Capital to the market. Already, the unit lends about $2 million every day in the U.S. alone to its small business merchants. As of May, the unit facilitated $500 million in small business loans.

In an interview with New York Business Journal last week, PayPal Vice President of Small Business Lending Darrell Esch told reporters that the company will be increasing its hold of the SME financing sector in the near future.

“At some point, many of us have dreamed of taking a shot, of going out there and starting our own thing,” he said. “By definition, all of our customers are those people, and so they’re all fighting to make a dream bigger or keep it alive sometimes, and easy access to fair capital is sometimes the differentiator.”

The executive operates out of the company’s Maryland office, where PayPal reportedly operates its Working Capital arm since its $1.2 billion buyout of BillMeLater several years ago. Today, the company has not disclosed how many employees work at PayPal Working Capital, but Esch told reporters that the force is growing monthly.

It’s likely to expand following the eBay separation, reports added, as hinted by PayPal CEO and President Dan Schulman in a statement following the split. “As an independent company, we see a tremendous opportunity for PayPal to expand our role as a champion for consumers and partner to merchants,” he said. “And to help shape the industry as money becomes digital at an increasingly rapid pace.”

Part of that role as industry shaper, reports said, is likely to mean the support of small businesses and likely to come in the form of new SME financing efforts.

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