- Key insight: Plano, Texas-based Fundbox has enjoyed significant growth in 2025 after receiving a warehouse lending facility from Cross River Bank and Waterfall Asset Management.
- Expert Quote: "If we get the right data, we can underwrite a small business in [about] 20 seconds," said Fundbox Chief Business Officer Anchit Singh.
- Forward look: Fundbox says it's working with several community banks on a Small Business Administration lending initiative.
Fundbox, an embedded small-business lender, is capping a year of strong growth with a partnership that will integrate its lending solutions into the platform of the business software and service provider Wave.
The agreement with Wave — which offers insurance, banking and payments solutions, but not loans — is the fourth big partnership that Fundbox has announced in 2025. It follows linkups with Cantaloupe in January, Autobooks in June and EverCommerce in September.
"Small business owners face ongoing challenges balancing cash flow while growing their companies," Adnan Glavas, Wave's director of partnerships, said in a press release. "By partnering with Fundbox, we're bringing our users a seamless and trustworthy way to access the capital they need."
For Plano, Texas-based Fundbox, the arrangement with Toronto-based Wave provides entree to more than 350,000 potential borrowers.
"Wave has built a powerful ecosystem for small business owners," Fundbox Chief Business Officer Anchit Singh said in the press release. "Our integration extends that value by embedding flexible financing directly into their platform experience."
The arrangements with Detroit-based Autobooks, Denver-based EverCommerce and with Cantaloupe, headquartered in Malvern, Pennsylvania, fit the same pattern. Fundbox provided a capital solution for fast-growing fintech platforms that offer business services but don't lend to their clients.
Fundbox used to seek clients on its own, but since 2022 has pursued a partnership model, Singh told American Banker in an interview. The company also maintains relationships with Intuit, FreshBooks and Nav.
In 12 years of operation, Fundbox says it's made more than 150,000 loans totaling $6 billion. Approximately $1 billion of that volume has come in the last 14 months.
Fundbox relies on data-driven digital underwriting to reach small businesses that banks sometimes struggle to serve with their more traditional credit-evaluation methodologies. These potential borrowers include contractors, sole-practitioner professionals and small retail establishments.
"If we get the right data, we can underwrite a small business in [about] 20 seconds," Singh said.
Typical Fundbox clients lack the higher credit scores and, in many instances, the time necessary to apply for bank credit, according to Singh.
"With a small business running on a day-to-day basis, if someone asks them to write a three-page business plan, they just don't do it because they have so many other things to do," Singh said. "The documentation required for a Small Business Administration loan is also very heavy."
Closer ties with banks
Founded in 2013, Fundbox has received much of its financing from venture capital investors. Its ties to banks have been growing, though.
In September 2024, Fundbox secured a warehouse credit facility from $8.1 billion-asset Cross River Bank and Waterfall Asset Management, which boosted its total annual origination capacity to $2 billion. Fundbox did not disclose the size of the warehouse facility.
Meanwhile, through its tie to the payments provider Autobooks, Fundbox has gained wider exposure to community banks, dozens of which offer that fintech's accounting and payments services to their mobile and online banking customers.
Several banks have tapped Fundbox for assistance with SBA lending, but that initiative is in its early stages, Singh said.
Noah Cooper, chief investment officer at Fort Lee, New Jersey-based Cross River, said the Fundbox warehouse facility fits into the bank's broader strategy of backing leading embedded small-business lenders.
"It is gratifying and validating to see Fundbox leverage the warehouse facility to scale originations and deepen its impact on the SMB lending market," Cooper, who is also head of Cross River's
Singh said Fundbox has achieved significant growth in 2025, though he stopped short of labeling it a breakthrough year. The online lender has enjoyed exceptional years prior to 2025, "even though we have not made a lot of noise a lot of times."
"That is something that is changing," Singh said. "Whatever we celebrate internally we are also celebrating externally a little more."
