Kabbage Acquires Lending Data Provider Orchard Platform Markets

Small business lending platform Kabbage is making plans to acquire Orchard Platform Markets, a provider of lending data and services.

According to Bloomberg, several sources said that Kabbage plans to use Orchard’s technology. Orchard co-founders Matt Burton and David Snitkof are also expected to join Kabbage if the deal goes through.

There’s no word on how much Kabbage will pay, and nothing has been finalized. Both companies declined to comment.

Founded in 2013, New York-based Orchard initially provided Wall Street firms with data on the marketplace lending sector. Investors included Citibank’s Vikram Pandit and Morgan Stanley’s John Mack.

But the business began to falter after Orchard decided to become a trading platform for loan securities. Unfortunately, large marketplaces such as LendingClub did not want to give the company permission to trade their loans because of regulatory concerns.

That resulted in Orchard searching for a buyer in recent weeks.

Kabbage seems like a good fit. It focuses on small businesses and licenses technology to banks, much like Orchard. SoftBank invested $250 million into Kabbage last August, bringing its total equity investment to more than $500 million.

For its part, Orchard has raised about $40 million, with funding from Spark Capital, Thrive Capital and other investors, and last raised financing in July.

Just last month, there were rumors that Kabbage was looking to pick up a new round of equity funding for the purpose of acquiring rival SMB lender OnDeck. As of last year, Kabbage had also entered a strategic partnership with Banco Santander SA to provide loans to small businesses in Britain.

The company also announced that it has priced the largest asset-backed securitization of small business loans in the online lending industry. That means it will be selling about $525 million worth of loans to investors, which Kabbage says will allow it to up its loan volume to around $2.7 billion.