deBanked

“I would say 90% of all of our interactions we send out a Zoom link, and we do a video call,” said Edward DeAngelis, CEO of QualiFi, “We call it our discovery call. It’s typically a 30 minute, very in depth discovery call with every one of our clients.” In an era when hyper-growth has become increasingly dependent on automation and AI, QualiFi is finding opportunity by honing in on the human experience.

“What’s happening is people who have that home equity are using that to fund small business financing,” said Figure CEO Michael Tannenbaum on the company’s Q2 earnings call. “That’s a new avenue for us. We’re lapping about a year of us launching that, and it’s already grown to a meaningfully significant portion of our volume…we’re now signing up people that would historically not have been in the mortgage business whatsoever.

The 2026 Inc 5000 list is out. Below are some of the familiar names that appeared from the financial services category: (did we miss you?

NerdWallet users have traditionally turned to Google to begin their financial journeys. A question entered into the search bar would surface a NerdWallet article, sending users to the company’s site. Now, that behavior is changing. “We are in the middle of an AI transition that is changing how people get their answers to their money questions,” said NerdWallet CEO Tim Chen during the Q2 earnings call.

Shopify Capital originated $1.4B in small business loans and merchant cash advances in Q2. “Capital was a larger driver this quarter, while loss rates in payments and credit are both at normalized levels,” said Shopify CFO Jeff Hoffmeister during the Q2 earnings call. Beginning in April of this year, Shopify replaced its MCA product in Canada with a loan product in response to new regulations from 2025.

“Square Loans are underwritten on data banks can’t see and serve sellers banks won’t. Our loan cohorts have had loss rates of less than 4% through every cycle we’ve seen,” said Block CEO Jack Dorsey in his Q2 shareholder letter. Square Loans has led online small business lenders in originations for a while, bolstered mostly by its massive captive POS ecosystem, but solidified with the performance of those loans.

“In 2025, Canada amended regulations that impacted merchant cash advance products,” Shopify said during its Q2 earnings. “As a result, we transitioned our Shopify Capital product in Canada, from merchant cash advances to loans which are accounted for under ASC 310, starting in April 2026.” For the entirety of the quarter and for all geographic areas, Shopify Capital made $1.4B in loans and MCAs through a bank partnership.

The TIB checked out on the application and with the Secretary of State (SOS). The company had been in business for almost exactly five years—comfortably beyond the minimum underwriting guidelines. But its online footprint looked much weaker, almost as if the business had opened yesterday. Maybe it had. Or maybe the business did not actually exist at all, and the validated corporate records were simply part of a sophisticated fraud designed to slip past the gatekeepers.

Back in February, Trust Science acquired Lenders API, a real-time fraud-prevention and consortium-data platform developed in collaboration with the Canadian Lenders Association and its small business, consumer, and automotive finance members. The platform is designed to address bust-out fraud, synthetic identity fraud, and loan stacking. Not all “stacking” is fraud, of course, but a recent deBanked feature reported that stacking business loans and MCAs is certainly on the rise.

“I think using AI as a communication tool with the consumer is very exciting,” said LendingTree CEO Scott Peyree during the Q2 earnings call. “For example, we develop a lead.