Kabbage Is Revived By Processing PPP Loans

Kabbage Inc., the financial technology company that funds small businesses, has issued 110,000 Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) applications totaling more than $3.5 billion, the Atlanta-based company announced on Monday (May 18).

With more than $100 billion still available in the program, Kabbage said it intends to serve thousands more businesses in every state.

“Helping to restore over 500,000 jobs has been the greatest privilege to date for me, my co-founder and the entire Kabbage team,” said Kabbage CEO Rob Frohwein in a statement. “In a matter of weeks, we will disburse more dollars to small businesses than we did in all of 2019, serve more new customers than our last two years combined,” he said.

Kabbage was launched in 2011, in part with the backing of SoftBank Capital, a venture capital group founded by SoftBank.

As a Small Business Administration (SBA) approved lender, Kabbage said it continues to see a surge of demand from businesses with five or fewer employees. So far, independent contractors, sole proprietors and single-member LLCs represent 40 percent of all PPP applications approved through Kabbage. The average loan Kabbage approved is $31,500 with a median of $14,000, the company said.

“Our technology platform allowed us to reach these milestones with a fraction of the resources accessible to lenders with trillions of dollars in assets, once again demonstrating the power of FinTech,” Frohwein said.

At the end of March it appeared the company itself could have used a PPP loan. As PYMNTS reported at the time, Kabbage furloughed a “significant number” of its U.S. staff, which has 500 employees and reportedly closed its Bangalore, India, operations. The company’s executive staff members took a “considerable” pay cut.

Since then, Kabbage has processed PPP loans representing almost $175 million in fees, the Financial Times reported.

“We are certainly still seeing strong demand,” said Kathryn Petralia, president of Kabbage in a statement.

Some small businesses have yet to take advantage of the program because of mistrust and skepticism about whether the loans will be forgiven, she added.

Square, the payments company led by Jack Dorsey, said during an earnings call on May 6 that it had received approval for PPP loans totaling $520 million, the news service reported.

Still, those numbers are a fraction of the volume processed by Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, which said they expect to make about $29 billion worth of PPP loans.