Case Study: J.P. Morgan integrates Slope’s AI-powered platform to offer instant B2B financing at point of sale

J.P. Morgan has recently invested in and partnered with Slope, a Y Combinator startup, in a move that combines J.P. Morgan’s extensive client relationships with Slope’s AI-driven B2B payment platform. This collaboration aims to provide corporate clients with improved short-term financing options and embedded payment solutions at the point of sale.

The partnership brings together J.P. Morgan’s financial strength and Slope’s innovative approach to credit risk assessment and monitoring. Grace Howie, Vice President of Trade & Working Capital Fintech & Product Strategy at J.P. Morgan Payments, and Lawrence Lin Murata, CEO and co-founder of Slope, both emphasize the significance of this alliance. Howie highlights Slope’s AI capabilities as a key factor in the decision to collaborate, while Murata points out the advantages of Slope’s comprehensive platform for enterprise customers.

Grace Howie, Vice President of Trade & Working Capital Fintech & Product Strategy at J.P. Morgan Payments

1.  What specific capabilities or innovations from Slope attracted J.P. Morgan to this partnership, and how does it complement J.P. Morgan Payments’ existing offerings?

By combining J.P. Morgan’s fortress balance sheet and depth of client relationships with Slope’s strengths in underwriting and credit risk monitoring as well as platform flexibility, we are well-positioned to meet our clients’ needs in a rapidly evolving market. We have chosen Slope to help provide our clients with a solution to offer short-term financing as an extension of payment terms to their business customers, powered by Slope’s platform.

The AI capabilities that Slope has is a true market differentiator in this space. The fact that they not only use AI for initial underwriting, but also for the ongoing risk monitoring of the portfolio, is what really attracted us to Slope. The continuous reviewing of a business customer means Slope’s team can be alerted to both positive and negative circumstances that allow for various actions bringing value to those businesses and our clients. That isn’t something we’ve seen anywhere else in the market.

2.  How does the integration of Slope into the J.P. Morgan Payments Partner Network align with your strategy for addressing the evolving needs of corporate clients in the embedded finance market?

J.P. Morgan Payments is one of the largest payment providers in the world and has one of the largest payments ecosystems, with hundreds of live third-party integrations spanning virtually every industry and use case. The Payments Partner Network allows clients to tap into our ecosystem and easily view and learn the value of our partner product solutions to help their business scale. Slope will join the J.P. Morgan Payments Partner Network, which delivers end-to-end payment experiences through an ecosystem of third-party applications that can grow businesses faster.

The U.S. embedded finance market is determined to be worth $20 billion, with many organizations looking to implement solutions that reduce friction, streamline processes and support origination. Working with Slope, our team at J.P. Morgan Payments can help meet client demand by providing access to a financing solution that integrates directly into the point-of-sale, translating into higher conversion rates.

It has been found that nine out of 10 CFOs want more accounts receivables automation in order to solve payment delays and discrepancies in invoicing. And this speaks to the problem that Slope is solving: if you integrate a suite of payment solutions at checkout, it enables the merchant to receive payment – in the mode of the buyer’s choice – at the point of purchase. This therefore mitigates non-payment risk for our clients, as merchants, while simultaneously keeping business customers happy with access to credit, purchase larger amounts of inventory without draining cash, improving supply chain health and supporting growth. Moreover, business customers are able to automate their accounts payables process, further enhancing efficiency and cash flow, and ultimately leading to increased savings and reduced payment delays.

3. Can you discuss the potential synergies between J.P. Morgan’s global reach and client base and Slope’s AI-driven platform, particularly in terms of expanding short-term financing solutions?

The benefits to our clients include the ability to:

• Drive sales, average order value and conversion by increasing the buying power of existing & potential customers
• Streamline processes, including customer onboarding and accounts receivable tasks
• Offer a purchasing experience that is responsive to changing customer expectations
• Help mitigate risk of non-payment

In addition, our clients’ end customers will also see benefits, including being able to:

• Unlock working capital and manage cash flow
• Access financing and complete a purchase in a seamless, unified experience
• Convenient purchasing experience and easy access to financing across all channels, including in-store
• Increase inventory to accommodate seasonal needs

4. Looking ahead, how do you see this partnership influencing J.P. Morgan’s approach to fintech collaborations and the development of innovative payment solutions for enterprise clients?

At J.P. Morgan Payments, we are committed to expanding our trade and working capital solutions to meet client needs, and we constantly monitor trends and work with our clients to understand how to prioritize our investments. We continually look to enhance our capabilities, and consider various options around whether to build, buy or partner, as well as how to leverage the power of J.P. Morgan firmwide to support our clients. We believe in the power of collaboration as a means of bringing best-in-class capabilities to our clients. With a proven ability to deliver innovation at scale combined with best-in-class service, we continue to invest in new technologies to help our clients accept and make payments by any method or channel, from anywhere and at any time.

Lawrence Lin Murata, CEO and co-founder of Slope

1. How does Slope’s AI-driven approach to B2B payments differentiate it from other platforms in the market, and what specific advantages does it offer to enterprise clients?

Unlike other companies that are taking a more segmented approach to B2B payments,  our Enterprise customers can offer simple payment options to their buyers, along with access to capital, credit risk management, and more, all in one platform. All of these features are powered by our AI-driven underwriting and risk-scoring infrastructure, which is built in-house from the ground up. Our focus on enterprise is a differentiation in and of itself, and making all of these business functions available in one platform allows us to serve our enterprise customers in a superior way.

2. Can you elaborate on SlopeAI and how it will enable financial institutions and wholesalers to improve their underwriting and client monitoring processes?

We chose to build our entire stack on-top of real-time data (open banking) and an underwriting system with instant onboarding, continuous monitoring, and active learning built in. Because of the background of our team (many people have backgrounds in AI, robotics and autonomous driving), these design choices were second nature to us, but an anomaly in finance where loan applications take days, processes are manual, and data is not real-time. 

Achieving such a level of automation is only possible by deeply integrating AI at every step. For instance, bank transactions are messy, complex, and context-dependent. To solve this we built Slope TransFormer, a proprietary Large Language Model trained to understand, enrich, and categorize bank transactions with human-level precision. Another example is KYB: traditional solutions are surface-level and lagging – often requiring a human to manually check for web presence, legitimacy, and bankruptcies. To solve this we built an AI agent with web access trained to carry out a due diligence process and generate a report that’s fed directly into our database. Importantly, all these systems are built to continuously improve with more and more data.

3. With the strategic partnership with J.P. Morgan, how do you envision Slope’s growth trajectory and market penetration changing, particularly in serving Fortune 500 companies?

In addition to investing equity & debt in Slope, we will now be a recommended solution for J.P.Morgan’s entire list of clients. This is obviously very positive for Slope’s growth trajectory.  We’ve already signed several Fortune 500 companies as clients, and the J.P.Morgan partnership will be a meaningful accelerant.

4. How does Slope plan to utilize the new funding to scale operations, and what are the key areas of focus for technological advancement in the near future?

A few things: We will double down on our investments in AI, continue to invest in implementing & scaling existing enterprise partnerships, and ensure our technology remains a differentiator for Slope. 

We’re currently a 25-person team, so we’re looking forward to beefing up and bringing on more hands to serve these major Fortune 500 companies. In terms of technology developments, we’re focused on continuing to improve our underwriting infrastructure and our AI models to best serve our customers.