“Reaching $1 billion in annual funding offers was a learning moment”: Lendflow’s Founder and CEO, Jon Fry, on how that figure became a springboard for internal innovation

Not all bridges are made of steel and concrete. In finance, many exist out of sight – invisible rails of code, APIs, and data flows connecting borrowers to lenders. While many in the crowded embedded finance space straddle the line between partner and competitor, Lendflow has staked out a different identity as a neutral bridge in the credit infrastructure stack.

Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Austin, Texas, Lendflow isn’t a lender itself. Instead, the platform operates as the connective tissue between brands that want to embed credit products and a network of more than 75 capital partners capable of funding them. 

Lendflow’s product mix is built around three main pillars:

• Lendflow Connect links brands and lenders through APIs and embeddable widgets. 
• Lendflow Intelligence is a data engine that brings data and decisioning into one place, allowing firms to benefit from insights that might otherwise be lost in fragmented underwriting infrastructure.
• Lendflow Automate deploys workflow automation and AI agents to handle the repetitive, manual work that bogs down lending workflows.

The result is a modular system: a SaaS startup can slot in a single component with a line of code, while a large enterprise can optimize the entire lending process end-to-end. 

Lendflow’s approach has delivered results. By the end of 2024, the platform had powered over $1 billion in annual credit offers. Brands and SMBs saw faster funding and deeper customer engagement; for lenders, this translated into faster originations and higher-quality deal flow.

The strength of the platform lies in what happens under the hood – connecting, automating, and powering embedded credit for others. That invisible infrastructure is now award-winning, recognized as Best Overall Embedded Finance Platform at this year’s Tearsheet Big Bank Theory Awards.

We spoke with Jon Fry, Founder and CEO of Lendflow, to unpack how that vision took shape.

Q: Lendflow opted to enable lending as a neutral platform, not as a direct lender. Can you walk us through the thought process behind that choice, and how it shaped everything that came after?

Jon Fry: When we first started, there was a lot of pressure to become the embedded lender and build a loan book side by side, building the technology. We knew doing both could create misalignment of incentives and could take away the focus from the technology. Instead, we saw a real opportunity to act as an intermediary — a role that allowed us to improve the lending process without needing to insert ourselves as a lender. Over time, as we worked more closely with customers and network partners, we uncovered additional ways to add value by supporting them directly through all of the lessons we had learned from our role as the intermediary.

That approach not only helped us stand out from competitors but also gave us clarity of focus. Rather than splitting our attention between lending and infrastructure, we’ve been able to dedicate ourselves entirely to solving the challenges of building modular and adaptable embedded lending infrastructure. The result has been a better product that’s tuned specifically for driving out inefficiencies from the lending process that comes from serving the unique needs of customers with distinct products and embedding those credit products into software.

Q: Balancing the needs of brands embedding finance with lenders supplying capital is complex. What specific challenges did the firm face in aligning incentives across these two groups, and how was Connect designed to solve for that?

Jon Fry: The problem is balancing all of the different requirements and customer experiences that the supply side (our lender partners) had for the borrower onboarding experience. Balancing many different products and lenders can lead to better product/borrower fit, but it also increases the complexity substantially, as you have to balance all of the disparate lender experiences. Many of these experiences happened offline, as much of the industry was and is still not fully digital, adding to the complexity. To make things more difficult, brands also had a very specific experience that they envisioned as well. So, balancing the requirements of the brands and lenders and creating a seamless experience for the borrower was a huge challenge.

That’s why we built the borrower platform. From the borrower’s perspective, the journey should feel seamless, even though the backend involves multiple systems and stakeholders. Take a typical use case: a customer applies for financing through a brand they already trust, that application flows through Lendflow’s infrastructure, and then our network of lenders responds with multiple offers. Despite all the moving parts, the borrower expects and deserves a consistent, clear, and trustworthy experience.

That’s exactly why we built Lendflow Connect. It was designed to smooth out the complexity behind the scenes while keeping the borrower’s journey simple and branded. Features like customizable communications and our Borrower Platform give customers a single, branded portal where they can review offers, interact securely with lenders, and stay engaged with the original brand they applied through. In short, Connect unifies the experience for borrowers while enabling lenders and brands to work together more effectively.

Q: Lendflow is built on three pillars: Connect, Intelligence, and Automate. Which of these was hardest to get right in practice, and what impact did that choice have on your partners?

Jon Fry: Each of the three pillars has required significant effort to design, refine, and bring to maturity. Together, they create a cohesive ecosystem, but each comes with its own set of challenges.

• Intelligence has arguably been the backbone of the entire platform. It powers the decision logic that determines if customers are approved quickly and efficiently, how to price their loan, how applications are routed, how offers are matched, and how information flows between lenders, brands, and borrowers. Getting this right required countless iterations — making sure that the criteria were accurate, the right partners were connected, and that data could move seamlessly without errors. It was an intensive process, but the payoff was immense: a reliable, scalable foundation that ensures borrowers are connected with the right financing opportunities.
• Connect, meanwhile, is what most applicants experience directly, and brand and lender partners use to connect to the Lendflow ecosystem. On the surface, it looks like a simple embeddable application and onboarding experience, but behind the scenes, it orchestrates a complex communication stream. It includes deep integrations into each lender’s systems so all data can flow securely. Borrowers need to see their offers clearly, know who to engage with, and have confidence that their information is validated and secure. Lenders need all of this data to sync into all of their systems in real time. Brands want this experience to be contextually embedded into their product and for their customers to have a seamless in-product loan onboarding experience. Building Connect meant obsessing over design, process, and every human touchpoint so that the customer journey feels seamless and uninterrupted, even though the backend is highly intricate.
• Automate is our newest pillar, and in many ways, the most dynamic. It introduces an AI-powered layer that streamlines workflows previously bogged down by manual processes. Because AI continues to evolve so quickly, Automate is something we’ll always be refining. We’ve already launched agents for analyzing documents, enriching applications with additional data, calling and supporting customers in the onboarding experience, and monitoring and managing email/SMS inboxes. With many improvements ongoing and more agent builds in the works, it’s less about achieving a final state and more about continually pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. This ongoing evolution ensures lenders can keep improving efficiency while still supporting borrowers with a smooth, guided experience.

Each pillar has been difficult in its own way, but together they’ve shaped a platform that not only addresses the technical challenges of embedded lending but also elevates the experience for every participant in the ecosystem.

Q: Hitting $1 billion in annual offers to businesses seeking funds through Lendflow’s platforms marks a major milestone. What new opportunities did that scale open up – for you, your partners, or the way the platform evolves?

Jon Fry: We’re very proud of that milestone, not for the number itself, but for what it represents: real businesses and individuals gaining better access to the capital they need to grow and achieve their goals. It showed us that our infrastructure is making a tangible difference at scale, which has always been at the heart of our mission.

At the same time, reaching $1 billion was a learning moment. It pushed us to step back and examine our internal systems –- asking how we could streamline operations, reduce manual effort, and ultimately serve more people, more efficiently. That reflection directly influenced the creation of Automate, our AI-driven layer. Before launching it publicly, we tested Automate within our own workflows, proving it could meaningfully reduce bottlenecks while maintaining the diligence and care every application deserves.

Now, bringing those tools to our customers and partners means they too can benefit from the same efficiencies. The milestone was both a validation of what we’ve built and a catalyst for innovation, helping us see where to improve, so we can continue to scale responsibly and sustainably.

Q: In five years, where do you see embedded credit infrastructure evolving next – and what do you hope Lendflow will have achieved for the ecosystem?

Jon Fry: Over the next several years, we believe the growing impact of AI will transform the industry. Today, one of the biggest friction points in embedded lending is the heavy manual workload required to process and approve applications. It consumes resources, slows down the flow of capital, and introduces complexity around delivering a consistent branded experience for borrowers.

As AI-driven automation replaces these manual processes, access to capital will expand dramatically. Decisions will be made faster, the borrower journey will feel smoother, and the scalability of embedded credit solutions will increase across industries.

For Lendflow, our ambition is to stay at the forefront of this evolution. We want to continue building systems that not only push the industry forward but also make it effortless for lenders to maintain healthy lead funnels and for individuals and businesses to access the capital they need. Our vision is a future where embedded lending is both highly efficient and deeply accessible, with an invisible layer of infrastructure powering economic growth behind the scenes.