PayPal Australia Reaches $500M SMB Loan Volume

PayPal Australia’s small business lending operations have reached a new milestone, facilitating $500 million in working capital loans, reports in Finder said on Monday (Aug. 12).

PayPal Working Capital is looking to fill the small business lending gap in Australia, according to Andrew Baines, the firm’s general manager in Australia.

“The businesses we work with have told us that securing a traditional business loan can be a long and drawn-out process, time which many small businesses just don’t have,” he said in a statement, according to reports. “Increasingly, we are seeing businesses seek tailored solutions which meet their business needs, and bridge the gap left by traditional funding providers.”

Reports pointed to PayPal Australia research, which found that 75 percent of businesses in the country agree that access to capital is more difficult. Two-thirds of surveyed businesses said the struggle to receive approval on a loan application is a growing barrier to doing business, while half say their worries about cash flow have increased since last year.

“PayPal Working Capital only launched in Australia less than five years ago, and with over $500 million now issued to more than 7,000 businesses, we can see there is an ongoing demand for alternative finance solutions to support small businesses and to help them thrive,” said Baines.

Earlier this year, PayPal announced it has issued more than $10 billion in funding to small businesses across its collective range of small business financing offerings in the U.S. and abroad with Working Capital and Business Loans. At the time, PayPal VP and Commercial Officer Global Direct Darrell Esch told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster that the intensifying trade dispute between the U.S. and China is likely to heighten small businesses’ demand for working capital.

He also noted that the company’s SMB lending operations saw “much more demand than we anticipated” when PayPal Working Capital entered the Germany market.