Catching Up With Marketplace Lending – A Timeline
April 20, 20172/17
- Prospa, an online small business lender based in Australia, was valued at $235M (AUD) in a $25M capital raise
- Square announced funding $248 million worth of business loans in Q4 2016
2/21 A Massachusetts state court vacated a merchant cash advance COJ
2/24 SoFi raised $500M in a financing round led by Silver Lake Partners that reportedly gave SoFi a $4.3B valuation
2/27 Prosper Marketplace closed a loan purchase agreement with a consortium of lenders for up to $5 billion of loans that has a provision that also enables the lenders to buy up to 35% of the company
2/28 BlueVine secured a warehouse line of up to $75M from Fortress
3/1 Lendio launched a new franchise program, allowing local offices around the country to become Lendio franchisees
3/3 Citing Madden v Midland, Colorado regulator brought a federal lawsuit against Marlette Funding for violating the state’s usury cap
3/5 Two trade associations, the Innovative Lending Platform Association (ILPA) and the Coalition for Responsible Business Finance (CRBF), joined forces. The merged company will continue to be known as ILPA
3/6 Upstart raised $32.5M
3/7
- It’s reported that former CAN Capital CFO Aman Verjee is now the COO of 500 Startups
- Kabbage priced a $525M securitization. It was oversubscribed
3/9 Citing Madden v Midland, Colorado regulator brought a federal lawsuit against Avant for violating the state’s usury cap
3/13
- Melvin Chasen, the founder of Rewards Network (originally Transmedia Network, Inc.) passed away. He was 88.
- The New York State Assembly rejected the Governor’s proposal to grant the Department of Financial Services (DFS) regulatory authority over any online lender doing business in the state
3/15
- The New York State Senate also rejected the proposal to further regulate lending
- The OCC published a manual on how it will evaluate charter applications from fintech companies
- The New York DFS published a statement rejecting the OCC’s plans
- The WSJ reported that Marlette Funding was cutting nearly 1/5th of its workforce
3/16 WebBank announced that it had a net income of $29.2M for 2016 and that it had a market valuation of $319.4M
3/20 Prosper Marketplace announced that it had originated $2.2B in loans in 2016, down from $3.7B in 2015, and had a net loss of $119M.
3/21 It’s reported that Kabbage will set up its European headquarters in Ireland
3/22 OnDeck expanded its credit facility with Deutsche Bank by $52M to a total of up to $214M
3/27 IOU Financial wins Gold Stevie Award for Best Use of Technology in Customer Service
3/30 In Advance Capital announced that they had secured access to an additional $50M
4/5
- Budget passes in New York. Proposed lending legislation was not included in it.
- Kabbage surpasses $3 billion funded to small businesses
See previous timelines:
12/16/16 – 2/16/17
9/27/16 – 12/16/16
Revenue Based Financing Continues to Spread at Global Pace
September 30, 2025
Earlier this month, Uber Eats joined the revenue-based financing movement by partnering with Pipe Capital.
Karl Hebert, Vice President of Global Commerce and Financial Services at Uber, said of it, “We are happy to team up with Pipe to bring working capital to Uber Eats. Restaurants are our partners at Uber, and the backbone of our communities, yet many struggle with access to capital.”
It’s an unsurprising step considering rival DoorDash rolled out a merchant cash advance program nearly four years ago, though Uber arguably began experimenting with MCAs nearly ten years ago. And Uber is hardly doing it just to do it. Uber, for example, rolled out Uber Eats Financing, a revenue based financing product in Mexico through a partnership with R2 this past January, which went so well that they also rolled it out in Chile months later.
📢 Announcing a big milestone for R2 & @Uber!
Following a successful launch in Mexico, we’ve expanded our partnership with Uber Eats to Chile — bringing frictionless access to capital to thousands of merchants across the region. https://t.co/61WgP1ZtHy
— Roger Larach (@rogerlarach) April 30, 2025
In Chile with R2, the service is described as taking place entirely within the Uber Eats Manager App with a 5-minute application process and payments made automatically and deducted by a fixed percentage from sales made using the platform.
In the US with Pipe, it says that the Uber Eats App Manager will show capital offers from Pipe that are customized based on restaurant revenue, cash flow, and business performance.
Uber joins Amazon, Walmart, Shopify, Intuit, Stripe, DoorDash, PayPal, Square, GoDaddy, Wix, Squarespace and others in offering a revenue-based financing product.
Revenue-based financing as a product type is available in but not limited to the US, Canada, Mexico, Chile, UK, Germany, Ireland, Spain, South Africa, Nigeria, India, Hong Kong, Netherlands, Australia, Japan, Brazil, Singapore, and more.



Kudos to the entrepreneurs taking a chance in the worst economic period of modern times. Starting a business is already a truly challenging task in itself but before we shower you with praise for being the ultimate warrior of capitalism, let’s put everything into perspective.



























