‘Banks can look at you and say, we don’t want to look at you’: Payability wants to serve the seller-entrepreneur
- Payability, a company that finances online SMBs, saw major success over the course of the pandemic.
- But creating a risk model that can shift and swerve through the world of seller sites is a challenge.
With small business booming and ecommerce exploding, financial service providers are finding potential in the overlap.
Payability, founded in 2013, offers financing and payment solutions for ecommerce sellers. New businesses that sell through Amazon, Shopify, Newegg, Walmart, eBay, among others, can apply for an advance on payments or loans to help pay for business expenses through Payability, embedded in their marketplace accounts.
The primary goal of Payability is to zero in on ecommerce companies that are just starting out in the business and may not have enough history in the game to apply for bank loans.
“If you’re an online-only business, and you are thinly capitalized, and you’ve been in business for less than two years, you’re not necessarily profitable every single month,” said Keith Smith, co-founder and CEO of the company. “These are all recipes for a bank to look at you and say, we don’t want to look at you.”
With the rise of entrepreneurship and online shopping, Payability has seen a lot of growth over the course of the pandemic.
In October last year, the company announced it surpassed $3 billion in funding to seller-entrepreneurs. A third of the funding came in 2020 alone.
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