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Biz2Credit, an online lending marketplace geared toward small businesses, has received a $250 million investment capital agreement from Direct Lending Investments, a fund that purchases small business loans through online and peer-to-peer lending platforms.
December 29 -
Banks approved a greater portion of small-business loan applications in June compared with last year, an indicator of an improving economy, according to a Biz2Credit study issued this week.
July 10 -
Online marketplace lending platforms are filling real needs. But few banks participate in this booming niche, reflecting the industry's risk aversion and regulatory concerns as well as resistance to change.
January 22
Small business alternative lender Biz2Credit has added Fortis Payments to its roster of payment partners.
Through this partnership, companies that use Fortis merchant payment processing services will gain access to Biz2Credits online small business lending marketplace. Biz2Credit already has partnerships with payment firms iPayment and Flagship Merchant Services.
Biz2Credit will use data from Fortis to better evaluate the creditworthiness of business borrowers, in addition to its own metrics.
The addition of new data sources improves Biz2Credits ability to assess borrowers, the company says. Over time it gets deeper and deeper, longer and longer [term] data," Rohit Arora, co-founder and chief executive officer of Biz2Credit said in an interview. "The whole idea is that we are making it very data rich."
Arora also believes the data mined from those payments will lead to fewer defaults. Biz2Credit monitors payment data, including seasonal trends, to allow for greater flexibility on payback installments. Arora said that as of last month the platform's default rate is 0.7%. Borrowers will also have the ability to pull payment records from the platform free of charge for IRS filings; Arora wants to create a one-stop shop for small business financial services.
"We are not just a transactional platform where you come to get money," Arora said. "At the end of the day we're acting like a virtual CFO."
