Kabbage Taps Debt Capital Markets for a Cool $200 Mil
November 16, 2017
Kabbage has been accessing the capital markets fast and furiously, most recently on the debt side. Today they’ve announced a new $200 million asset backed revolving credit facility with Credit Suisse. Just a couple of months ago, Kabbage attracted $250 million in equity to its coffers from SoftBank, which the alternative funder will direct toward ongoing operational expenses and expansion.
With the Credit Suisse deal, the tally for Kabbage’s debt funding capacity reaches $750 million. “The new revolving credit facility will be issued by Kabbage Asset Funding 2017-A LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Kabbage Inc,” according to a press release.
Kabbage expects the credit facility will help them to scale faster. They plan to use the credit to add bigger small businesses to its client roster as well as extend higher lines of credit with longer durations.
“The new revolving credit facility with Credit Suisse is a debt round. Those funds are for our small business customers, and will be used to continue to provide them with easy access to working capital,” Deepesh Jain, Kabbage Head of Capital Markets, told AltFinanceDaily.
It’s Kabbage’s maiden credit facility to be rated by credit rating agency DBRS. “The top two classes of the multi-class transaction earned investment-grade ratings of ‘A’ and ‘BBB’ and are collateralized entirely with assets originated through Kabbage’s fully-automated underwriting technology,” according to the press release.
Jain told AltFinanceDaily the DRBS rating is highly significant. “It strongly demonstrates the proven success of Kabbage’s fully-automated platform and its data-driven risk analysis for small business lending. It speaks to the company’s leading position in the SMB-lending marketplace and Wall Street’s confidence in Kabbage,” he noted.
As Jain pointed out, Credit Suisse has been an early supporter of fintech. Indeed, the Swiss bank a year ago similarly provided a $200 million asset-backed revolving credit facility to another alternative funder, OnDeck.
Alternative Funders and Bank Partnerships in the Spotlight
Jain declined to comment on whether Credit Suisse might be interested in Kabbage’s lending platform for its own use. Alternative funder and banking partnerships were recently thrust into the spotlight with a lawsuit filed by a Massachusetts-based small business owner against Kabbage and Celtic Bank, which have had a partnership for at least several years.
The lawsuit alleges that the funding model of the defendants “was designed to evade usury laws,” according to The National Law Review. Apparently, the plaintiffs, which are listed in the public filing as Alice Indelicato and NRO Boston, had several small business loans and now accuse Kabbage of “renting” Celtic’s bank charter. Jain declined to comment on the lawsuit and the plaintiffs couldn’t be reached.
Capital Markets Pipeline
Meanwhile, at the rate they are going, we could see Kabbage tap the capital markets again in 2018. “Capital markets are something we will continue to explore to further diversify our funding options,” said Jain.
Lights, Camera, Crypto-Transaction – How a Lending Journalist Raised Millions to Build Magic Lamps Through the Murky World of Initial Coin Offerings
November 15, 2017
This past July, the winner of the Best Journalist Coverage category at the 2017 LendIt Conference Awards, announced that he would be stepping outside of his journalistic endeavors to raise money for a futuristic lamp company. The product, dubbed Lampix, is described as a lamp with a projector, a camera, specifically placed light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and a cloud-enabled computer. On the company’s “Medium” blog, Lampix promises that the product is “designed to transform any flat horizontal surface into an interactive computer.”
The man behind Lampix, George Popescu (whose Lending Times news site competed against and beat out fellow finalist AltFinanceDaily at the LendIt Awards), makes for an interesting case study in alternative finance. That’s because Lampix shunned traditional capital-raising methods by relying on an Initial Coin Offering (or ICO), an unregulated blockchain-based corporate event which is similar to an initial public offering. Rather than purchasing shares, as is the case in an IPO, investors in an ICO receive digital tokens instead of shares. In August, Lampix raised $14.2 million through its ICO*.
Popescu’s name popped up again a few months after the LendIt award on a regulatory blotter in the UK.
In case details published by the UK’s Insolvency Service on August 1st, the agency announced that Popescu was disqualified from serving as a company director.
Mr Popescu breached his fiduciary duties to act in the best interest of Boston Prime Limited (“Boston Prime”) and/or failed to ensure that both Boston Prime, as the regulated firm, and him individually, as the approved person, complied with the Financial Conduct Authority (“the FCA”) rules and guidance.
$6.2 million was transferred out of the company to a company named FXDD. Boston Prime’s receiver is presently suing FXDD seeking the return of the funds to the company. Proceedings are ongoing. Mr. Popescu is not under investigation and there are no legal proceedings at this time against Mr. Popescu.
It’s an inauspicious beginning for someone financing the “lamp of the future” using an unregulated and controversial strategy. Even so, when its ICO concluded on August 19, Lampix declared its gambit a success after raising $14.2 million through the sale of its digital tokens, which are known as PIX.**
By mid-November, the market value of those digital tokens, which exist on the Ethereum blockchain, had dropped by 50%, causing Lampix investors to suffer losses of $7 million. Unlike shareholders in publicly traded companies, token buyers have few investor protections. It’s not clear they are even considered to be actual investors at all. Buried in the fine print of Lampix’s 85-page “white paper” – a convenient way to avoid the label of prospectus – is a disclaimer. “Buyer should not participate in the [PIX] Token Distribution or purchase [PIX] Tokens for investment purposes. [PIX] Tokens are not designed for investment purposes and should not be considered as a type of investment.”
Additional disclaimers, moreover, declare that the white paper is not a prospectus, that the tokens “are not securities, commodities, swaps on either securities or commodities, or a financial instrument of any kind.”
But the distinction has not deterred people from joining in the frenzy of buying digital tokens like PIX. So much so, TechCrunch reports companies employing this strategy had raised nearly $800 million by means of ICOs in the first half of 2017.
And the SEC is not exactly excited about ICOs. “Fraudsters often use innovations and new technologies to perpetrate fraudulent investment schemes,” a July 29 directive by the SEC states. “Fraudsters may entice investors by touting an ICO investment ‘opportunity’ as a way to get into this cutting-edge space, promising or guaranteeing high investment returns. Investors should always be suspicious of jargon-laden pitches, hard sells, and promises of outsized returns. Also, it is relatively easy for anyone to use blockchain technology to create an ICO that looks impressive, even though it might actually be a scam.”
On September 29, moreover, the SEC brought an enforcement action against REcoin Group, charging Los Angeles businessman Maksim Zaslavskiy and two companies he controls with defrauding investors “in a pair of so-called initial coin offerings (ICOs) purportedly backed by investments in real estate and diamonds,” an SEC press release said.
The SEC alleges that Zaslavskiy and his companies –REcoin Group Foundation and DRC World (also known as Diamond Reserve Club) — have been selling unregistered securities, and that “the digital tokens or coins being peddled don’t really exist.”
Meanwhile, telephone calls and an e-mail to the SEC seeking the federal regulator’s view on Lampix’s ICO drew a terse response from Ryan T. White, a public affairs specialist, who replied that the agency would “decline comment.”
Deborah Meshulam, a partner in the Washington office of law firm DLA Piper and a former SEC enforcement official, told AltFinanceDaily: “Regarding the lack of equity ownership, Lampix is seeking to establish that the tokens are not securities. Whether the SEC would agree should it decide to look into the offering depends on the facts and circumstances. The SEC staff would look past form to substance to assess whether the sale of the tokens constitutes an investment contract under legal standards. If so, then the SEC would view the Lampix offering as a securities offering. It may be that Lampix (or its lawyers) already vetted the offering with the SEC but I don’t know the answer.”
Popescu tells AltFinanceDaily in an e-mail interview, “We had to respect all securities rules and regulations of course, respect the Howey test and so on. There were no hoops to jump through as we are not trying to avoid anything or prevent anything. We honestly built a token to build a community to help us crowdsource (mine) pictures for all applications among which, Lampix.”
“Each PIX token,” the Lampix website explains, “will be used as a form of payment to picture image miners, voters and app developers or to purchase a Lampix, cloud computing and apps.”
Meshulam also notes that the June, 2017, date of the Lampix white paper pre-dates the SEC’s enforcement activity in this area. She adds, “The statement that ‘token sales or ICOs are not currently regulated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission may be very literal in the sense that there is not a specific regulation, but the SEC has stated that, in the right situation, ICOs are subject to the US federal securities laws.”
Erin Fonte, an attorney in the Austin, Texas, office of Dykema Cox, and the leader of the firm’s regulatory & compliance group, says, “The ICO stuff is so up-in-the-air. The SEC is looking at it closely. But it’s fairly new. And some of them (ICO’s) have been tied to fraud and Ponzi schemes. If a client came to us (seeking advice), we’d want to vet the people behind the offering.”
But what of Lampix, the company that won the Augmented and Virtual Reality category of the South by Southwest (SXSW) Accelerator Pitch Event earlier this year in March – and put a pretty feather in the cap of Popescu?
Popescu’s resume is no doubt impressive. He holds a trio of master’s degrees in various scientific and technological disciplines, including one from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And he is a serial entrepreneur who lays claim to having founded 10 companies: they include, according to his LinkedIn profile, online lending, a craft beer brewery, an exotic sports car-rental space, a hedge fund, a peer-reviewed scientific journal, and a venture-debt fund.
He’s charmed journalists like Forbes contributor Roger Aitken, who declared: “The founders (of Lampix)…believe that Lampix will impact humans as much as computers or smart phones in the future…Think Tom Cruise in Minority Report. Imagine your room in five years: you will be able to use any surface around you as if it was a computer. The ability to transform any surface into an interactive computer (augmented reality) is going to unleash applications we have not even conceived of.”
The Lampix website hyped its ICO with the aid of an infographic listing “active product inquiries” the company has in its pipeline, the likes of which includes Amazon, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Sony, IBM, BMW, Bloomberg, PwC, and the Aspen Institute. With all of these names seemingly lining up, it begs the question: Why did Lampix choose the controversial route of an ICO to raise capital?
But it’s hard to determine the seriousness of these corporate relationships. Florin Mihoc, Lampix’s Strategic Partnerships & Development Advisor, said he could not assist us with confirming any of them, citing the slow and cumbersome bureaucracy of dealing with Fortune 500 companies. He did invite us to try reaching out to some of them on our own, which we did.
Bloomberg is one of the few acknowledging a relationship with Popescu’s company. Chaim Haas, head of innovative communication at Bloomberg, told AltFinanceDaily that the New York-based media and financial communications company “collaborated” with Lampix. Bloomberg, he says, “has used Lampix hardware in its fellowship program (Bloomberg AR Fellows) as a prototype for augmented reality applications.” But Haas declined to elaborate on whether Bloomberg’s relationship with Lampix was more than an experimental one.
Edward Caldwell, director of public relations for East Coast markets and sectors at Pricewaterhouse Coopers, the Big Four accounting firm, declined to comment about Lampix. “We can’t discuss individual companies, clients or engagements,” he reports.
Douglas Farrar, senior manager for communications and public affairs at the Aspen Institute, told AltFinanceDaily that he could find no business relationship between Aspen and Lampix. “I have gone down quite a few rabbit holes here,” he said in an e-mail, “But I’m coming up empty.”
When Popescu was directly confronted about this, he wrote, “The companies would only figure [in the infographic] if they actually themselves reached out to us and we exchanged emails with somebody from that entity. Most of these entities have many people and most of the companies’ people will have no idea [that] somebody else in the company is talking to us.”
Telephone calls and e-mail requests for comment to Microsoft were not returned.
A spokesperson using BMW of USA’s official twitter account, however, responded to an inquiry by saying they were a customer of Lampix, “but only for office usage.”
Meanwhile, George Popescu has been on the sales trail. A case in point was his October 5, Youtube interview conducted by Ian Balina, a self-described influential investor in blockchain technology and cryptocurrency – and someone with a reputation as an industry promoter and evangelist. (Balina caters to the get-rich quick crowd and publishes how-to guides trumpeting promises like “How ICOs can make you a millionaire in 3 years” and “make millions with bitcoin.”)
Balina asked Popescu the softball question, could he show viewers a demonstration of the product? Popescu admitted he wasn’t prepared to do that and when he attempted to set one up on the fly, it didn’t work. The incident is notable because Lampix has been promoting the video through its social media network.
Popescu corroborates a number of details about the ICO, however. He confirmed the ICO price of a PIX token to be 12 cents, the US dollar price people had to pay per token. Cryptocurrency exchanges, where token speculators can buy and sell tokens online, show the trading value of a PIX token currently hovering around 6 cents, which translates into roughly a 50% loss in value.
Investors feeling hurt by such a loss can’t contest the purchase of PIX tokens with their credit card issuers. That’s because of a requirement that token sales had to be purchased with ether (ETH), the currency of the Ethereum blockchain. While ether is arguably similar to Bitcoin, it operates on an entirely different blockchain.
To participate in the ICO, in a Youtube video, Lampix also explained to purchasers, for example, how they could first buy ether with dollars through an online exchange known as Coinbase** before forwarding the ether to a digital wallet. Next, investors were instructed to send the ether from the digital wallet to a specially designated PIX address. An automated “smart contract” would then release the appropriate amount of tokens to the buyers’ digital wallets 31 days after the ICO was consummated.
It’s a byzantine procedure. And for investors – especially for those who are not exactly tech-savvy – the rigmarole makes it nearly impossible for them to recover their money should they feel buyer’s remorse. Neither the video nor the Lampix white paper mentions any buyer restrictions. Indeed, Lampix’s white paper specifies that “anyone” in the global market can participate. That means that an investor could theoretically be underage or a citizen of Iran or North Korea. (When asked what steps Lampix took with regards to KYC/AML, Popescu said, we “implemented the standard ones with partners specialized in it.”) Investors could even be citizens of the UK where Popescu is banned from being a company director.
And global they are. AltFinanceDaily interviewed Rudy (whose last name we are withholding), a graduate student who lives in Singapore that says he bought approximately $2,200 worth of PIX tokens during the ICO. The drop in value has gotten him so frustrated that he’s contacted securities regulators in the United States to investigate Lampix. Despite the caveat in the white paper that tokens are not an investment and should not be used for investment purposes, Rudy said he considered himself to be an “investor” and that his reason for buying the tokens was to sell them in the future for a profit.
Popescu, who wasn’t asked about Rudy’s experience specifically, told AltFinanceDaily that Lampix is not selling PIX tokens as an investment but rather to primarily build a community. “What people do with the tokens is their choice and we cannot prevent them,” he asserted.
English is not his first language but Rudy said, “I think that [the] SEC should regulate ICOs in the USA. There are no rules currently, teams can promise anything before the ICO and forget everything after the ICO. Things have to change, there should be legal pressure on crypto teams.”
Rudy added that he was “so enchanted” by Lampix’s ideas that he had promised himself not to sell the tokens for at least two years even if they were losing value. He conceded that he was not a tech expert. But, he says, the award at the SXSW competition was an important milepost to him.
AltFinanceDaily found 700 more people interested in Lampix on the company’s official Telegram channel. The chat history since September 20, which we were able to obtain, has been dominated by talk of the PIX token’s trading value. Those bemoaning the low price regularly use the term “investors” to describe themselves – never mind that the white paper specifies that PIX tokens are not supposed to be an investment or to be used for investment purposes.
The chat’s administrator, who uses the nickname Chester, identifies himself as a “community manager” at Lampix. At one point he too refers to PIX holders as investors. “Hey guys,” he wrote in the channel on October 1, “Lampix is a company, not a single person, we don’t do things that quick, but pretty quick and we try not to confuse our investors by telling you unconfirmed news. Be patient, things will be just fine.”
Laura Toma, another community manager for Lampix, responded to complaints about the depressed price in the channel by saying, “The issue is that people want to get rich in a month.”
Indeed, investors hound not only the community managers, but also Popescu himself, who frequently joins in on the chat and fields questions about the trading price of PIX. “You should care more about the company revenue, clients, users.” Popescu replied to one user.
“Are you serious?” a user calling himself Dante fired back. “We are investors, and we care about the return on investment.” Another user with rough English tells Popescu, “As you know, most people come to ICOs for short-term profit. We cannot deny it.”
Others keep the faith. “PIX will be the real Aladdin’s magic lamp,” writes one user. Another hyperbolically predicts the price will “fly out of the earth, fly to the moon, and finally fly out of the galaxy.”
There is very little discussion about the use of the product itself while numerous inquiries are written in Mandarin. “Lampix has a lot of Chinese investors,” writes one. Other users self-identified as citizens of Russia, Romania, and France. Meanwhile, Toma writes, “Yes, there are investors from USA as well.”
Despite the losses that investors have so far experienced with Lampix, among other concerns, Popescu isn’t limiting himself to just one ICO. According to his online statements, Popescu is connected as an “advisor” to another company engaged in an ICO. AirFox, a Boston-based start-up launched by two Google alumni, provides free data to mobile phone users in return for eyeballing advertising. In early October, Airfox’s ICO raised $15 million. But a month later its AIR tokens, which sold for two cents apiece during the ICO, had lost 75% of their trading value. That means investors in AIR, the company’s ICO ticker symbol (which is becoming an increasingly ironic moniker) have seen more than $11 million go up in smoke almost overnight.
Popescu says in their defense, “The AIR tokens are meant to solve a real problem, of remunerating people who watch ads in exchange of getting more data and minutes on their mobile phone. The ecosystem is still being worked upon, the product is not live. Once the ecosystem is live we will see what really happens. Until then the token is mostly being handled by speculators. The price can therefore vary widely and it doesn’t reflect their true value.”
Even as Lampix and AirFox have been racking up massive losses for investors, Popescu announced on November 5 in a LinkedIn post that he would be involved in five more ICOs.
Among them is DropDeck Technologies, at which Popescu is listed as the chair of the advisor board; its ICO is scheduled for November 21. Another company, Factury, for which he is listed as an advisor, is initiating its ICO on December 15.
He’s an ambitious man.
And his ICO familiarity hasn’t escaped the scrutiny of PIX investors. “I find it strange that you are directing 5 other ICOs,” writes one user in the Telegram chat on November 4. “To make Lampix big, this will require a CEO [who is working] full time working on the project.”
Popescu responds personally. “I am working full time on the project but people have asked me to advise on their ICOs and this grows Lampix’s notoriety a lot in the crypto space,” he writes. He offered further assurances that he wouldn’t be advising those companies’ projects beyond their ICOs.
In an email to AltFinanceDaily, he writes, “I run right now Lending Times, Lampix and Block X Bank only. The ICOs are just customers of Block X Bank. I have built about a dozen companies in 9 years, sold a few, closed a few. Each company has a team to help me, I am not doing this alone. For the ICOs I am more or less involved as an advisor / helping them project-manage their ICOs. How to run 3 companies? It’s about being effective, organized, delegating, partnering and being productive. Oh and I don’t watch TV, so maybe I have a few more hours per day than the average person. I do work long hours.”
Block X Bank, through which Popescu extends his efforts toward other ICOs, is described on the company website as “a boutique investment consulting company specializing in connecting blockchain projects with funding.”
In all of these ICOs, money is seemingly being created out of thin air. A consultant who was hired by AltFinanceDaily to help analyze the technical aspects of both ICOs and smart contracts determined that Lampix raised much more than just the $14.2 million in token sales. In addition to the 114 million PIX tokens sold to investors, our consultant explained, the company also issued 220 million tokens to itself. At the ICO price of 12 cents apiece, those tokens would theoretically be worth $26.4 million – a huge piece of the total ICO pie that Lampix could sell on cryptocurrency exchanges if it wanted to rake in even more money.
There’s a kicker too. At scheduled intervals over the next four years, the smart contract that made PIX tokens possible in the first place is slated to automatically create – and allocate – 330 million new tokens to Lampix. Thus, when Lampix raised $14.2 million in August, the company reserved $66 million worth of PIX tokens for their corporate use.
Popescu said in his e-mail to AltFinanceDaily that these company tokens are for “corporate usage like employee incentives, M&A, other company investments…etc.”
It’s a mind-boggling sum of money for the development of a futuristic lamp whose followers mostly seem to reside on internet chats like Telegram, reddit, and bitcointalk.org.
And this has occurred despite the company’s withholding any information regarding Popescu’s status in the UK. Balina, who interviewed Popescu on Youtube, told AltFinanceDaily he wished he had known about his disqualification in the UK. “This is definitely a big issue and I wish I would have known about it so that either my audience or I could have asked him this directly on the live stream,” he said.
AltFinanceDaily asked Paul Savchuk, Co-founder, CEO, and Chief Product Officer at Cryptocurrency Capital LLC, a US-based hedge fund that only invests in utility tokens as commodities, if Popescu’s ban in the UK would have been relevant information in the Lampix ICO. “Yes, that might be a red flag for us in some cases and require us to perform additional research,” he wrote in an emailed response. “We look at management very seriously – especially since a lot of projects are treated like startups and management is a key component to whether or not many of these ICOs can make it. We try to find such events and spot red flags whenever we conduct our due diligence research on ICOs. The reason: each project has something that needs to be improved. ‘Red flag’ – sometimes conversely can lead to a great opportunity when other market participants ignored it or were too skeptical.”
Mr. Savchuk further said, “Lampix is a perfect example of a coin that on the surface looks very promising, but when you dig a little deeper, you do find red flags that can dampen the excitement for this investment.”
And yet Savchuk spoke rather positively of the Lampix product after reading their white paper. “We believe the project is looking to change the current AR/VR tech industry,” he said, referring to augmented reality/virtual reality. “The project is promising for two reasons. First, they have multiple companies in their pipeline. Second, they have a legitimate product which they will manufacture and sell. They are one of the few blockchain products to offer a tangible product with the ability to disrupt the market.”
“Third,” he went on, “most companies have gaps in building a strong structure at the outset of their existence. Some have bugs in initial code that cause breaches in cybersecurity. Others release product with a low level of usability – the ones who are aware of such problems have a greater chance of success. We would prefer to see publicly known strengths and weaknesses of such companies. Management has to be transparent about their team and product no matter what. Whenever possible, we want to be in touch with the management team.”
With regard to the price drop, Savchuk said, “This is a danger for all purchasers of ICOs. Sometimes it’s caused by token purchasers (swayed by) fear and greed and (hoping for) easy money and fast money. I doubt somebody sold Apple Inc.’s stock right after its IPO. It is also very difficult to restrict exchanges from allowing massive pump and dumps. That’s not even mentioning the difficulty of measuring the value of tokens,” Savchuk concluded. “Consequently, such projects are struggling with low credibility. However, it also creates a possibility for those who believe in the idea and product on a long-term run.”
Popescu downplays the significance of the UK issue. The root of the debacle, he says, is the result of Boston Prime – the company he previously ran – being forced into bankruptcy by the actions of a company he is now suing called FXDD. “FXDD bought the companies and then bankrupted them and that’s why Boston Prime [went bankrupt],” he writes. “Myself personally and each company separately are suing FXDD for this. UK has archaic laws where if you are a director of a bankrupted company you get disqualified from being a director again for a time. Attorneys charge about 40,000 GBP to defend this automatic case and I weighed the pros and cons and decided to ignore it as I have no plans to be a director in the UK for time being.”
Investors unhappy with underperforming ICOs may be willing to challenge their legality. On October 25, for example, a class action lawsuit was filed against Tezos, a computer networking project that raised $232 million in one of the largest ICOs ever. In a complaint, the lead plaintiff alleges that, among other things, Tezos unlawfully engaged in the unregistered offer and sale of securities and fraud in the offer or sale of securities. “In July 2017, Defendants conducted an ICO in which they sold 607,489,040.89 tokens (dubbed ‘Tezzies’ or ‘XTZ’) in exchange for digital currency worth approximately $232 million at the time,” the complaint reads. The plaintiff, who purchased 5,000 Tezzies, feels he was misled about the company and the offering.
Internal squabbling at Tezos which has delayed the release of its product and the sheer amount of money at stake have put the company on the map with the mainstream media and business press. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Fortune as well as news services Reuters and Bloomberg have all covered the allegations of fraud.
The day before the class action lawsuit was filed, moreover, a AltFinanceDaily reporter attended an explosive session at Money2020 in Las Vegas that saw Tezos co-founders, Arthur and Kathleen Breitman, attempting to give a status report of the company. A crowd that had gathered outside prior to the doors opening had attendees speculating whether the Breitmans “would actually show their faces” in the midst of all the drama.
To date, no lawsuits have been filed against Lampix despite the drop in the token’s value.
At a cryptocurrency/ICO meetup in NYC in October, a AltFinanceDaily reporter met with executives at one company preparing an ICO who said they would not allow American investors to participate because of securities-enforcement fears. Pressure is mounting in the Far East as well. Citing their illegality, Chinese regulators in September issued a blanket cease-and-desist order on all ICOs in their country. What that means for Lampix’s Chinese investors bears watching.
Popescu says that Lampix supports regulation in China. “Of course, all Chinese people have to follow Chinese regulation,” he writes.
Meanwhile, on the product front, Popescu says that right now a Lampix lamp can be purchased for $10,000, a tidy sum because they must be hand-made. “We plan to improve the manufacturing costs and then we’re planning to do a kickstarter early next year for around $500 [per] Lampix,” Popescu told AltFinanceDaily in his e-mail interview.
But for investors, it always comes back to the trading value of PIX. On October 25, one investor asks Popescu if the company will buy back its own PIX tokens at the ICO price to pump up their market price. “If you want a pump and dump please go to other companies,” Popescu responds. “We are here for 5-10 years to build a $100 billion dollar company and compete with Apple.”
And it all began with an ICO.
“ICOs also help with bootstrapping the user base – breaking the chicken and egg problem,” Popescu also explains in his e-mail to AltFinanceDaily. “In addition, given that Lampix is looking to crowdsource images, we prefer many different people hold PIX tokens rather than 2-3 VC funds. And last but not least I think tokens are better rewards for the community (liquid, mark to market, etc.) than illiquid instruments.”
Not everyone agrees that PIX is the most liquid instrument to grow the community. US Dollars come to mind, for example. “Let’s say I’m a customer,” one investor poses to Chester, a Lampix community manager. “I want to use the cloud computing service but then I see I have to pay with PIX. I have no experience in crypto and have no idea how to do that. I just want to use your service fast and don’t want to buy PIX coins first before I can make use of it. Will there be a fiat option?”
Chester is awed by the idea. “Well, you are so professional,” he writes. “Man, you are good. You are good, the question you threw just hit the spot seriously. I guess there is always something Lampix needs to figure out and choose the best solution. Technically speaking they are jolly good at this point, but it doesn’t mean it’s perfect.”
Chester, who assures him that he isn’t being sarcastic, goes on to refer to the investor who asked that fairly elementary question as a “big shark” that is “born to bite.”
It remains to be seen if the PIX “user base” shares the same philosophy as Lampix. Ian Balina, who interviewed Popescu on Youtube, separately asked his social media followers: “What’s the first thing you’re going to do once you hit your goals in cryptos?”
The responses fly in:
“Buying my Lambo”
“Travel to Paris”
“Buy an island”
“Buy my mum her dream home”
“Quit my job and start up something for me”
“Pay off mortgage and be financially free”
“Buy house in Miami, buy Lambo, enjoy life”
“Retire”
“Easy. Buy more crypto”
Meanwhile on Telegram, where investors continue to engage Lampix management on a daily basis, Dante offers a sobering reminder of what they’ve bought into, “We don’t have equity, we only have tokens,” he writes. “And we are taking a big risk.”
* The amount of tokens sold multiplied by the 12 cent ICO price doesn’t exactly match the dollar amount Lampix says they had raised. That’s because Lampix not only issued bonus tokens to buyers at each stage of their ICO but also because the market value of ether, which users had to convert to from dollars to buy PIX, had fluctuated when they reported how much they raised. Like Bitcoin, the value of ether is volatile.
** The smart contract Lampix wrote to launch Lampix’s tokens into existence specifically named them PIX tokens and dubbed their publicly identifiable symbol to be PIX.
*** Coinbase is a respected digital currency wallet platform based in San Francisco.
Former MCA Co-founder Meir Hurwitz Kicks Off New Venture With Kim Kardashian West
November 9, 2017I love how @screenshopit lets you find the exact designer looks you see people wearing online, plus suggests similar items at all price points! #ScreenShop_Ambassador https://t.co/TXZ23agVoT pic.twitter.com/nA8JBDVbU5
— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) November 7, 2017
An early innovator of the merchant cash advance industry has re-emerged on the business scene in a very different new venture focused on mobile shopping.
Meir Hurwitz, co-founder of Pearl Capital, the MCA company acquired in 2015 by Capital Z Partners Management LLC for as much as an estimated $60 million, is now the chief visionary officer of ScreenShop. The New York startup markets an app designed to enable users to shop for a specific item by uploading a screenshot of the item to the app.
Working on a mobile app is a longer shot than MCA and it doesn’t always pay off, but Hurwitz said Thursday he’s enjoyed learning the business after two years off and visiting 62 countries since selling Pearl Capital.
“It’s new and exciting for me, but I don’t get paid right away,” he said. “It’s something I haven’t done before — it’s kind of exciting for me.”
The app is the first developed by New York-based Craze Ltd. and publicly launched on Nov. 7 with celebrity Kim Kardashian West cited as an advisor. Craze employs 12 technical workers in Israel and five in New York, Hurwitz said.
Hurwitz started in MCA in 2006 and then launched Pearl Capital with partner Abe Zeines in 2010.
Pearl launched with $1 million and generated an $8 million profit in 2012. The following year, the company doubled its profit and reached origination volume of $100 million, Bloomberg reported in 2015. Hurwitz’s ScreenShop profile indicates that he’s a “three-time successful entrepreneur” and cites “over $500 million in funding capital.”
In addition to a real estate business in Puerto Rico, Hurwitz said he’s managing partner of New York-based GS Capital, a convertible debt company lending to small businesses. Zeines lists himself as the CIO of GS Capital, according to his online profile.
At ScreenShop, Molly Hurwitz (Meir’s sister) is listed as the co-creator and co-founder. CEO Mark Fishman was previously a risk manager for Pearl Capital.
The startup’s app, which is free, scans screenshots taken from any app or website on a mobile phone, converting them to similar items that can be bought for various prices. It plans to generate revenue by collecting a commission at the point of sale, Forbes reported.
“The results have been — we’re No. 5 on the app store category of fashion,” Meir Hurwitz said. “We’re just getting started.”
Goodbye Liens and Judgments
October 28, 2017
Justice can require sacrifice. Take the example of a decision by the three major credit bureaus – Equifax, Experian and TransUnion – to stop including some liens and most judgments in their credit reports.
The change makes life a little less unfair for consumers who fell victim to reporting errors. Many invested precious time and large amounts of money trying unsuccessfully to correct their credit histories and restore their reputations.
But for the alternative small-business finance industry, omitting data on liens and judgments increases costs, creates extra work and can even give rise to an unsettled feeling in the pit of the stomach. “You’re not looking at a full credit report anymore, which is kind of scary,” one alt funder admits.
Yellowstone Capital CEO Isaac Stern provides an example to illustrate what’s at issue. “Imagine I’m the Ford Motor Co. and I want to do a lease with you,” he says. “But I don’t have the information that you happen to have judgments from Chrysler, Chevy and BMW, so I approve your lease. Imagine that! Without full information, how do you make accurate decisions?”
Operating without the data could prove dangerous, agrees David Goldin, who sold his U.S. Capify operations to Strategic Funding Source in January but still runs Capify UK and Capify Australia and remains open to U.S. opportunities. “The IRS could come in and seize credit card processing accounts and prevent the lender from getting paid,” he says. “Once you have a judgment a creditor could come in and freeze bank accounts.”
Fears aside, the change in reporting probably won’t dry up alternative small-business credit – even in the short run, Goldin predicts. Alt funders will adjust quickly, he says, noting that they can compare the old and new credit scores of long-time customers to spot patterns and apply those patterns to their calculations. The industry can also tap alternative sources of information.
Even with those reassurances, the transition would have been easier if the industry had more advance notice, alt funders say. “We found out July 31 when a Reuters rep emailed us and said this is going into effect tomorrow,” recalls Stern. “That was really weird – I’ve got to tell you.” Experian didn’t provide a heads-up even though Yellowstone is one of its largest New Jersey customers, he notes. “We were a little bit annoyed, but what are going to do?” Meanwhile, Goldin says he didn’t begin researching the situation until AltFinanceDaily asked him about it. “I don’t think anyone really knew about it” much in advance, he says.
But the industry is finding out and taking action. Yellowstone, for example, is performing a performing a workaround by integrating the judgments and liens section of the Clear investigative platform into the information underwriters see when they open a file, Stern says. The integration required a couple of weeks of hard work by the Yellowstone tech team, he notes.
Clear, which is provided by Thomson Reuters, amasses public records that can date back 20 years and can fill more than a hundred pages, he says, adding that you have to know where to look for the relevant information. “You have to dig through it,” he says.
In the past, Yellowstone performed a Clear report on most files just before funding them, Stern explains. Now, the Clear report is scrutinized more extensively and earlier in the process – before the file is approved. As a result, Yellowstone underwriters will have all the information they need, but it will take them a little longer to get it, he says.
Yellowstone incurred the expense of obtaining additional user licenses from Clear, which cost it $800 to $900 monthly Stern says. Experian now charges the same price for less information, he notes.
Accommodating the changes didn’t require more underwriters but it became necessary to hire four additional data entry clerks to input information until the integration with Clear was completed, Stern says. Now that Clear and the Yellowstone systems are working together, the four extra clerical workers will shift their attention to inputting data from the increasing number of applications coming into the company, he says.
Most Alt funders won’t need to employ more people in their underwriting departments because changes to their models will be automated, Goldin says. “I don’t think this is as much of a game changer as people think it is,” he says of the credit bureaus’ new approach to reporting.” It’s just one extra step. It’s more of a nuisance issue than a manpower issue.”
However, a challenge arises for underwriters because leaving out the liens and judgments will result in higher credit scores for some loan or advance applicants, Goldin says. That means some alt lenders may need to go to the trouble and expense of tweaking their risk models to compensate for the change in the scores reported by the credit bureaus, he maintains.
The impact may be greatest among alt funders who rely on quick online decision-making, Goldin says. Adding extra steps to the process increases the difficulty of maintaining the speed that provides a selling point and a source of pride for those companies.
While Clear is helping to fill the gap at Yellowstone, it’s not the only company providing much-needed data. LexisNexis Risk Solutions isn’t a credit bureau and will thus continue to disseminate information it gathers from courtrooms on lien and judgments, Goldin notes. Alt lenders who weren’t already using the vendor’s service or were using it only when an application reached a predetermined threshold will face added expense because of the credit bureaus’ decision, he says.
Indeed, LexisNexis Risk Solutions views the credit bureaus’ hiatus on some liens and judgments reporting as a business opportunity to increase its sales by supplying the missing data, according to Ankush Tewari, senior director of marketing planning in the company’s business services section. The company was already selling data on liens and judgments and anticipates selling much more of it, he observes.
For 15 years LexisNexis Risk Solutions has been selling RiskView Solutions, a product that contains liens, judgments and other information not generally found on credit reports, such as the assessed value of a consumer’s home or a list of a consumer’s professional licenses. It offers no data on loan repayment but its other information helps define a consumer’s creditworthiness and character, Tewari says. Lenders can combine that peripheral information with credit scores for a more complete customer profile that outperforms the credit score alone, he suggests.
And there’s more. LexisNexis Risk Solutions has reacted to the credit bureaus’ decision by creating RiskView Liens & Judgments Report, which lists only those two types of records. “The credit bureaus announced these changes a year ago, and we knew there would continue to have a need for that data,” Tewari says. The company prices the RiskView information based upon the transaction volume, he notes, so a lender pays less per transaction as volume increases.
With this emphasis on liens and judgments, one might well wonder who tracks down the information. Companies like LexisNexis Risk Solutions gather and disseminate public records on liens and judgments from courthouses throughout the United States, says Tewari. Over the years the company acquired some of its competitors and eventually was spun off from its sister company, LexisNexis, which built its name partly as an aid for lawyers researching cases, he notes.
For decades, LexisNexis Risk Solutions has been providing the credit bureaus with raw data not only on liens and judgments but also on bankruptcies, Tewari says. The bureaus have then parsed those files electronically and appended the data to credit reports, he continues.
Problems arose because the credit bureaus’ tech systems could not always link the court documents to the right person when the courts provided only a name and address, Tewari maintains. Courts often limit information in their records to those two identifiers because they’re reluctant to divulge additional identification that criminals could intercept and use to commit fraud, he says.
Tewari traces the bureaus’ inaccuracies in matching court records to the right people to what he calls the bureaus’ “DNA.” The bureaus are accustomed to receiving “clean” information from lenders on a regularly scheduled basis. Conversely, some of the LexisNexis Risk Solutions data, gathered from obscure places like county deed offices, may arrive in a form that’s far from clean, he notes.
However, that lack of court information or inconsistencies in the presentation of that information doesn’t pose problems for LexisNexis Risk Solutions because the company cleans the data before analyzing it. Tests indicate its linking methodology works accurately with just a name and address more than 99.9 percent of the time, Tewari contends. Thus, the company can establish that John Smith at 1234 Maple Street is the same person as John A. Smith at 1234 Maple Street, he says. He considers that linking technology the core of the company’s operations.
The information LexisNexis Risk Solutions can supply becomes vital to lenders because studies indicate that people who have a lien or judgment on file are twice as likely as people without them to default on a consumer loan and five times as likely to default on a mortgage, Tewari says. “The data didn’t become less important because the credit bureaus decided not to include it anymore,” he maintains. “It’s still just as predictive as it was.”
Meanwhile, other types of information can also help lenders make decisions, notes Eric Lindeen, vice president of marketing for ID Analytics, a credit risk and fraud risk management company that offers a credit score called Credit Optics, which it bases on a combination of traditional and alternative credit data.
Alternative credit data is defined as anything the credit bureaus don’t include in their reports, Lindeen says. Examples include the bills consumers pay for cell phones, utilities and cable television, he notes, adding that rent is also sometimes considered alternative credit data. The category also encompasses records from marketplace lenders.
A consumer’s tendency to pay those bills on time, late or not at all can reflect on creditworthiness, Lindeen maintains. That history becomes relevant for alt funders because the small businesses they serve constitute a hybrid of consumer and commercial credit, he says.
Using that data, ID Analytics can spot people who are good credit risks when the credit bureaus still consign them to “thin file” status — the limbo where applicants don’t have enough credit history to evaluate their creditworthiness, Lindeen maintains. About 60 percent of near-prime applicants qualify for credit when lenders factor in alternative data, according to an ID Analytics study he says. At the same time, alternative data can also expose weaknesses among individuals with excellent traditional credit scores, he observes.
Combining alternative data with traditional data has become more important with the bureaus’ decision to stop supplying data on liens and judgments, Lindeen says. Leaving out that data will raise some credit scores, and the effect will be strongest among near-prime individuals with good but not great traditional scores, he notes. With those consumers, a 10-point shift could make a big difference in qualifying for credit, he says.
“Even though it’s a small population, it’s a critical population,” Lindeen says of those newly minted prime applicants. They may number only one in a hundred of a particular funder’s portfolio, but they may advance to another risk pool and consequently invalidate a risk model, he suggests. Over time, risk managers will adapt to the change and oversee a “risk migration,” he predicts.
Overall, between 6 percent and 9 percent of consumers will see their credit scores rise because of the bureaus’ new policy, Lindeen estimates. The change usually won’t exceed 20 points, he says. Still, about 700,000 will see an improvement of 40 points or more, he continues. “That’s a significant increase for a nontrivial population,” he says. “It’s likely their performance will stay the same as their score goes up.”
A study by VantageScore Solutions, the company that provides the VantageScore credit scoring model to the credit reporting bureaus, projected scores would increase an average of 10 points for slightly more than 8 percent of the scorable U.S. population.
Those changes are characterized as “minimal” by Francis Creighton, President & CEO of the Consumer Data Industry Association, a trade group that represents the three major credit bureaus as well as about a hundred other companies – mostly smaller credit bureaus around the country, resellers of credit bureau information and background screening companies.
The credit bureaus decided to curtail reporting of judgments and liens as part of the National Consumer Assistance Plan, or NCAP, Creighton says. NCAP is an agreement reached in March 2015 among the three major credit bureaus and the attorneys general of 31 states, who were pressing for fairness in credit reports. Many observers call NCAP a “settlement” but the agreement did not result from a lawsuit, he notes.
Under NCAP, the bureaus will continue to include bankruptcies in their reports because the records meet the standard of providing a name, address, Social Security number and date of birth and because visits to the courthouse to update records occur at least every 90 days. About half of liens don’t meet those standards and will be removed from credit reports, and nearly all judgments fail to adhere to the standard and will no longer appear on the reports.
Although Creighton declines to say how many consumers were victims of credit reporting errors, he emphasizes the severity of the problem for each victim. “If you were one of the people who had a name similar to somebody else or a similar Social Security number, it would impact you a lot,” he maintains. “I don’t know how widespread it was, but it was disruptive enough for individual people that it’s better just not to have it.”
A Federal Trade Commission study released in 2013 reported that a sample of 1,000 credit reports indicated that 25 percent had at least one error that could reduce scores, according to published reports. Such findings prompted state attorneys general to seek remedies that resulted in NCAP.
The bureaus planned to implement another major portion of NCAP in September when they were to begin waiting 180 days before reporting medical debts, Creighton notes. At the same time, debts for medical expenses covered by insurance policies were to be omitted from credit reports, he says.
Changes brought by NCAP represent part of ongoing efforts to improve the system, according to Creighton. “We want accurate information in the reports,” he says. “That’s good for everybody.”
ISOs Alleged to Be Partners in Debt Settlement “Scam” in Explosive Lawsuit
September 28, 2017
ISOs and brokers referring deals to debt settlement companies should pay attention to a lawsuit that was filed in the New York Supreme Court on Wednesday. In it, plaintiffs Yellowstone Capital and EBF Partners (“Everest Business Funding”) allege that certain ISOs are culpable partners in a scam that nefarious debt settlement companies are perpetrating on small businesses.
The debt settlement companies “mislead the merchants as to the services they will perform and the cost to the merchant, and they also conceal their relationships with the ISO Defendants and the fact that they or their affiliates are introducing these same merchants to merchant cash advance providers like Plaintiffs only to later induce those merchants to breach their agreements with their cash advance providers,” the complaint states.
Among the named defendants are:
- Corporate Bailout, LLC
- Mark D. Guidubaldi & Associates, LLC dba Protection Legal Group
- PLG Servicing LLC
- American Funding Group
- Coast to Coast Funding, LLC
- ROC South, LLC
- Mark Mancino
Several defendants are already best known for running an office “so sexually aggressive, morally repulsive, and unlawfully hostile that it is rivaled only by the businesses portrayed in the films ‘Boiler Room’ and ‘The Wolf of Wall Street,’” according to a salacious story that graced the back cover of the New York Post last month.
One paragraph of the complaint summarizes the allegedly collaborative scheme like this:
American Funding, Coast to Coast, […] (the “ISO Defendants”) are independent sales organizations (“ISOs”), companies that ostensibly support the merchant cash advance industry by brokering merchant agreements for companies like Plaintiffs. The ISO Defendants are anything but the proverbial “honest brokers.” As alleged below, they have partnered with companies that purport to offer debt relief services to merchants who have agreements with merchant cash advance companies like Plaintiffs. In practice, for these companies, “debt relief” is a code word for deceiving merchants to breach their existing agreements with Plaintiffs and to instead pay fees to these debt relief entities. In short, they scam merchants into believing that they can save them money when, in fact, they leave these merchants in financial shambles, while causing Plaintiffs to suffer millions of dollars in losses and future los[t] profits.
“’DEBT RELIEF’ IS A CODE WORD FOR DECEIVING MERCHANTS TO BREACH THEIR EXISTING AGREEMENTS”
Central to the plaintiffs’ claim is that they have ISO agreements with the defendants and that the defendants’ conduct is a breach of those agreements. The three causes of action alleged are tortious interference with contract, conversion, and breach of contract. Plaintiffs claim that 100 merchants with more than $3 million in outstanding balances are in breach of their contracts because of the defendants’ conduct.
The complaint was prepared and filed by attorneys at Proskauer, a 142-year old law firm founded in New York City.
Debt Relief Under Fire
The small business debt relief industry has been marred by scandal in recent years. In an unrelated criminal matter being handled in the Western District of New York, the owner of Corporate Restructure Inc. (no ties to Corporate Bailout) is currently residing in the Niagara County Jail awaiting trial on charges of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud and money laundering for failing to deliver the debt relief services it charged for. In that case, United States vs. Sergiy Bezrukov, Bezrukov advertised that he could reduce a merchant’s short term debt by up to 75%. He is facing up to 30 years in prison. He was also previously a merchant cash advance ISO.
Two other MCA funding companies, Pearl Gamma Funding and Pearl Beta Funding, filed a lawsuit last November against another debt relief company that calls itself Creditors Relief. The complaint in that case also alleges tortious interference with contract and is still pending.
Meanwhile, a lawsuit filed in May by famous TCPA litigant Craig Cunningham against Corporate Bailout and Mark D Guidubaldi & Associates LLC went unanswered, according to court records. Cunningham, who alleged violations of telemarketing laws, filed for a default judgment against Corporate Bailout on September 12th.
Taking Advantage
Both Yellowstone Capital and Everest would not comment on the lawsuit they filed, citing pending litigation. Sources close to them, however, contend that both companies take matters that involve merchants being taken advantage of very seriously.
“When our own ISOs work directly in concert with companies that induce merchants to breach our contracts, that’s a problem,” said one source who did not wish to be named and was speaking generally about the recent introduction of debt relief service companies to the industry. “They’re taking advantage of businesses that can’t afford to be taken advantage of.”
An email sent by AltFinanceDaily to Mark Mancino early Thursday afternoon, an individually-named defendant alleged to be affiliated with the other defendants, has not yet received a response. This story may be updated if a reply is received.
A COPY OF THE COMPLAINT CAN BE VIEWED HERE.
What Will it Take to Grow OnDeck’s Stock Price?
September 20, 2017OnDeck closed at the exact same price on September 14th as it did on July 20th, $4.58. In between, OnDeck reported one of their best quarters ever (they released their 2nd quarter earnings on August 7th) and experienced a temporary boost to $5. Even then, the stock was 75% down from the IPO price and more than 80% down from their all-time high, yet that too couldn’t be sustained.
In Q2, OnDeck only had a GAAP net loss of $1.5 million and announced that they had expanded their collaboration with JPMorgan Chase for up to four years to provide the underlying technology supporting Chase’s online lending solution to its small business customers.
In the rest of the lending world, optimism is in style. Square is up 121% year-to-date, according to the AltFinanceDaily Online Lender Tracker and even Lending Club is up 14%.
More traditional finance companies like American Express and Intuit are meanwhile hovering near their 52-week highs, according to the Specialty Business Lending Tracker.
Some of OnDeck’s former employees at least appear to be doing well. Just recently, the former Chief Sales Officer was named COO of CoverWallet, the former Director of External Sales was named Chief Revenue Officer of Pearl Capital and the former Director of Portfolio Management and Credit Operations was named SVP at Breakout Capital.
Bond Street Has Stopped Lending
September 13, 2017
NYC-based small business lender Bond Street has stopped making new loans, according to sources who worked with them. The Wall Street Journal published a similar report earlier today. In addition, the WSJ reported that Goldman Sachs is hiring 20 of Bond Street’s employees.
Just seven months ago, Bond Street announced that they had closed a $300 million loan purchase agreement with Jefferies. The WSJ reported that an inability to raise additional equity is what threw a wrench in their future. The same situation happened to Bizfi just a few short months ago, who wound down after 10 years and shipped their portfolio off to rival Credibly to service.
Bond Street’s 1-3 year loans with APRs ranging from 8% – 25% were terms that many in the alternative business lending universe say is a fundamentally unprofitable model. The company now appears to be joining the ever growing purgatory of alternative small business finance companies. They join Dealstruck, Herio Capital, Bizfi, and Nulook Capital. CAN Capital was previously on that list but was recently restructured and revived.
Able Lending, another small business lender, denied that they were going out of business but admitted they were looking to be acquired.
Square is also reportedly in talks to hire Bond Street employees, the WSJ claims. When Bizfi closed, their employees were mainly picked up by rivals World Business Lenders, Strategic Funding, iPayment, 6th Avenue Capital, and others.
LeaseQ and ARF Financial Partner to Automate Hospitality Equipment Financing
September 12, 2017BOSTON (Sept. 12, 2017) – LeaseQ, an online marketplace connecting business owners, equipment sellers, and lenders to make selling and financing equipment fast and easy, today announced a national partnership with ARF Financial, the only FDIC-compliant financial lender that provides short-term, unsecured business loans and lines of credit for restaurant/hospitality business owners and retailers nationwide.
“We are unique in having our own sales organization, and LeaseQ gives our loan consultants around the country a lease product with instant quotes,” ARF Financial CEO Steve Glenn said. “Now we are a one stop lender offering additional products to satisfy our customers funding needs for their businesses.”
Innovations in the equipment finance industry will continue to increase flexibility and convenience for customers, according to the Equipment Leasing and Finance Association’s (ELFA) Top 10 Equipment Acquisition Trends for 2017. Automation fuels advances in instant quotes, soft credit pulls, same-day approvals, one-day funding and blockchain for secure, multi-party transactions – many of which are available today through LeaseQ and ARF Financial.
“You can finance a car in an hour, but not a walk-in freezer to start or expand a restaurant,” said Vernon Tirey, co-founder and CEO of LeaseQ. “One-day funding is a trendy thing to say in equipment financing, but when the restauranteur or hotel manager presses the button to get financing, it has to work. We’re advancing our technology and partnering with lenders like ARF Financial who understand the value of automation to make it happen.”
LeaseQ and ARF Financial offer automated, flexible equipment financing for hospitality merchants who are frustrated with the time it takes to get a bank loan, or who cannot get a bank loan at all, including those:
- Expanding a facility
- Upgrading equipment
- Adding a location and renovating the property
- Managing working capital, and more
There are currently 150 lenders on the LeaseQ platform serving 28 vertical markets. Learn more at www.leaseq.com.
About LeaseQ
LeaseQ is an online marketplace connecting businesses, equipment sellers, and equipment finance companies to make selling and financing equipment fast and easy. The LeaseQ platform is a free, cloud-based SaaS solution with a suite of on-demand software and data solutions for the equipment leasing industry. LeaseQ provides business process optimization (BPO) and information services that streamline the purchase and financing of business equipment across a broad array of vertical industry segments. Learn more at www.leaseq.com.
About ARF Financial
ARF Financial LLC is a California licensed lender that sources short-term business loans and lines of credit for restaurant/hospitality and retail merchants nationwide. Since 2001, ARF has filled the void between traditional bank financing and less attractive venues of obtaining capital, giving merchants the ability to maintain control of their business, be more profitable and meet their financial goals. The company is managed and staffed by industry veterans with extensive experience in restaurant finance and small to medium retail industries.
For more information on their services, visit their website at www.arffinancial.com. You may fill out their contact form at www.arffinancial.com/contact, call 1-866-702-4430, or send an email to funding@arffinancial.com for inquiries.
