Stripe Capital Extends Business Lending To Online Platforms

Payments giant Stripe is taking Stripe Capital, its push into online business finance and lending, to the next level.

Stripe Capital first got off the ground in September 2019, offering customers and businesses financing options through its online platform.

On Tuesday (Dec. 1), Stripe went live with the next phase in its business lending campaign, which enables online platforms to offer financing to their business customers through Stripe Capital.

In particular, Stripe Capital noted it equips platforms with an “end-to-end lending API” through which they can provide financing options. That enables platforms to offer an additional service for online merchants in need of a quick infusion of cash or some working capital without having to build their own lending solution.

With traditional banks scaling back their lending to small businesses, Stripe is looking to step into that void, with rapid lending decisions based on data culled from a customer’s past performance on the platform.

“Mundane though it sounds, access to capital is the primary bottleneck that limits the growth and expansion of most small businesses,” Stripe Co-Founder and CEO Patrick Collison tweeted Tuesday in the latest rollout by Stripe Capital. “So we built Capital for platforms: https://stripe.com/capital/platforms…. Help *your* customers grow faster by using our lending infrastructure.”

Meanwhile, two platforms got an early start using Stripe Capital to provide business financing.

Jobber, which provides home service management software, and Lightspeed, a point-of-sale and eCommerce platform, both announced over the summer they had started offering financing to home service providers and retailers through Stripe Capital.

“Stripe Capital makes it easy for internet businesses to get the funds they need when they need them,” said Will Gaybrick, Stripe’s chief product officer, noted in a PYMNTS report about the earlier rollout of Stripe’s business lending arm. “It’s important to think about financial inclusion not just in terms of consumers, but also in terms of businesses.”