BlueVine Grabs $49M In Funding

Alternative lender BlueVine has announced a major venture capital funding round to the tune of $49 million.

Reports today (Dec. 14) said BlueVine secured the Series D funding from various investors, including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, 83North, Citi Ventures, Rakuten FinTech Fund and Silicon Valley Bank. All are existing backers of the company, it noted.

“We are very proud of all we’ve accomplished in 2016 and excited to continue on our incredible growth trajectory,” BlueVine CEO and Founder Eyal Lifshitz said in a statement. “BlueVine is delivering unprecedented ease and convenience to meet SMB owners’ financing needs and help them achieve their goals.”

With the new funding, BlueVine said it will look to continue expansion of its team and add new product offerings. According to the company, it is expecting to provide more than $500 million in working capital financing to small businesses in 2017.

In addition to the Series D investment round, the alt-lender also revealed that it has increased its maximum credit lines in response to client demand. Invoice factoring lines have increased from $250,000 to $2 million, while business line of credit limits have been increased from $50,000 to $100,000.

BlueVine and its partners said the move demonstrates interest for the company’s loan products.

“BlueVine’s business line of credit has proven to be very popular with QuickBooks users,” said QuickBooks Financing business leader Rania Succar in a statement. “It fills a critical part of the QuickBooks Financing portfolio and allows us to extend credit to younger businesses.”

The funding round also comes at a time when new doubts have surfaced over the future of the alternative lending industry as a whole.

Data released this week from Biz2Credit found that alternative lender loan approval rates have dropped as some of the once-top players in the industry, like CAN Capital, face difficult times.