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CFPB Costs Consumers At Least 10x More Than They Get Back
A new study published by the White House Council of Economic Advisors found that the CFPB costs consumers more than it saves them. According to the report, CFPB regulations increased borrowing costs to consumers by $222 billion to $350 billion over the time period of 2011 – 2024. In return the CFPB has touted that it has returned more than $21 billion to consumers over the same time period.
A takeaway is that the while the CFPB has provided the optics of doing good for consumers it has actually cost them far in excess of the perceived benefit to them.
The full report can be downloaded here.
View PostShopify Capital Finishes 2025 With $4.2B in MCAs and Business Loans
Shopify revealed its full year MCA & business loan origination figures. $4.2 billion. That’s $1.2 billion over the previous year. Only 91.9% of these deals were considered “current” as of December 31, 2025. That’s down slightly from last year when 93.7% of deals were considered current at year-end.
For clarity, Shopify Capital offers funding in 8 total countries. The product is considered a value-add to its e-commerce platform and only offered to merchants who use it. Shopify Capital is in the same league as Square Loans and Enova in terms of origination volume.
View PostChannel Names Robert Moskovitz CFO, Eli Sethre Appointed President of Elite
Minnetonka, MN, February 17, 2026 – Channel announced today that Robert Moskovitz has joined the company as Chief Financial Officer, adding further depth to its leadership team during a period of continued expansion.
In his role, Moskovitz will oversee Channel’s financial strategy, with a focus on capital markets, liquidity, and long-term growth. He will lead financial planning and analysis, funding initiatives, and capital structure decisions, ensuring the company remains well-positioned as it scales.
Moskovitz has deep experience in equipment finance and capital markets. Most recently, he served as Chief Financial Officer at Verdant Commercial Capital. Prior to Verdant, he spent 14 years as CFO of LEAF Commercial Capital, where he played a key role in growing the business, raising capital, and building financial systems to support sustained growth.
“Robert is widely respected for his extensive experience and the impact he’s had across the industry,” said Adam Peterson, CEO of Channel. “Having someone of his caliber join Channel says a lot about the future we’re building. His background and perspective come at a perfect time as we continue scaling our organization with discipline and purpose.”
Moskovitz is an active participant in the equipment finance industry and has worked with policymakers and regulatory bodies on issues including tax reform, financial regulation, and lease accounting. He currently serves on the Equipment Leasing & Finance Association (ELFA) Board of Directors and its Federal Tax Committee.
As part of this leadership update, Channel also announced that Eli Sethre has been appointed President of Elite, a business unit brand that focuses on partnerships with Independent Sales Organizations and operates out of Kennesaw, Georgia. In this role, Sethre will lead Elite’s working capital strategy, centered on strengthening sales and operations, expanding the product offering, and deepening relationships across its core markets.
Under new and independent ownership, Elite is entering a renewed phase of strategic vision and growth. With a proactive approach and an emphasis on long-term value creation, the business is well positioned for its next chapter. Sethre was key in identifying this opportunity and expressed a strong interest in leading Elite through this period of transformation.
Sethre joined Channel in 2016 as Chief Financial Officer, where he oversaw finance and accounting, risk analytics, portfolio management, servicing, and reporting. Prior to Channel, he founded aFundia, a data analytics and modeling firm, and previously held senior leadership roles at CAN Capital across sales and marketing, finance and business planning, and risk analytics. After nearly a decade as Channel’s CFO, Sethre viewed the transition as an opportunity to broaden his leadership experience through a hands-on operational role.
“Eli has been instrumental in building the strong financial and operational foundation at Channel,” said Adam Peterson, CEO of Channel. “As our organization continues to evolve, his passion for leading Elite and his deep understanding of our strategy make him the right leader to guide the business into its next phase of growth.”
These leadership updates show Channel’s commitment to smart expansion and long-term leadership strength.
About Channel | Established in 2009, Channel is a leading full-service independent lender offering a single source solution for both equipment finance and working capital to small businesses exclusively through equipment finance companies. To date, Channel has funded over $3.35 billion to more than 34,000 business in over 52,000 transactions across the U.S. With headquarters in Minnetonka, MN, the company also operates additional business units and locations in Kennesaw, GA, Mount Laurel, NJ, Des Moines, IA, and Marshall, MN.
View PostdeBanked CONNECT MIAMI Draws 1,100 People, Sets All-Time Record: See Photos Here
deBanked CONNECT MIAMI 2026 surpassed all expectations and set a small business finance industry all-time record for signups with 1,100 people.
World Business Lenders (WBL) Announces a USD $250 Million Investment
February 11, 2026 – World Business Lenders (WBL) announced a USD $250 million investment from its primary financing partner. As a result, WBL becomes majority institutionally-owned, with its primary financing partner holding the largest single institutional equity position. The company’s founder and CEO, Doug Naidus, continues to lead the platform.
This increase to WBL’s balance sheet and capital access underscores the institutional validation of its core business model, as WBL continues now to scale its products, operations and lending footprint, including the launch of additional loan programs and origination channels in 2026.
About World Business Lenders
World Business Lenders provides general purpose short-term real estate collateralized commercial loans to a broad customer base comprised of short-term residential rentals, small and medium sized businesses throughout the country that lack access to traditional funding. WBL services its loan portfolios along with loan portfolios for third parties, specializing in the management of non-performing loans and REO management and disposition. For additional information, contact Terence Reilly, Senior Vice President, at treilly@wbl.com.
View PostA Conference Tale: Broker Fair vs. deBanked CONNECT
Before Broker Fair was ever decided upon as a conference name it had been put up on a whiteboard next to another possibility, Broker Fest. This was in mid-2017 when there was no guarantee that we’d ever get the chance to do more than one conference. Fair was ultimately chosen over Fest because it sounded more professional, like a job fair. Fest sounded like Spring Break and not the image I wanted. We also picked a date for this Broker Fair—May 14, 2018—and a venue. We chose to have it in New York City because the overwhelming majority of deBanked readers were located in the New York Tri-State area. The thought process was that it would be just a walk, drive, or train away for most attendees and they would not need to concern themselves with the cost of flights or hotels.
Although this is not widely known, the biggest problem we immediately faced was that we had been front-run. A competitor, someone from outside the industry, tried to strike first, and announced a conference custom-tailored to our audience for January 2018 in New York City, five months before ours. Having nearly a year to market and plan our first ever conference suddenly became a huge liability. As our advertisers got called and solicited to sponsor that instead of Broker Fair, we had been advised that we had already lost the war before ever even firing a shot.
But having been a regular on the conference circuit myself, I couldn’t help but think that New York City was a terrible place to invite people to in January. That got us thinking about a counter-offensive. Our data indicated that after New York, the Miami area contained the next highest concentration of deBanked readers. After that was Southern California. And after that was Toronto, Canada. By October 2017, we came up with a concept to do something smaller than a conference, a networking event focused simply on connections that didn’t necessarily have to be broker-branded. We called it deBanked CONNECT MIAMI. I believed that executing something like that would also build confidence in the market that we could attract a big crowd, a proof-of-concept so to speak for anyone unsure if deBanked’s online audience would convert to an in-person one. And so we rented out a rooftop bar in South Beach and scheduled the first deBanked CONNECT MIAMI to take place January 2018 (a good time to be in Florida), the same month as that other conference in New York. Our networking event was a smashing success, so much so that we got front-run AGAIN. Since our event was known to be on the rooftop, yet another newly announced rival rented out the bar on the ground floor to try and divert people away from ours to theirs. Thankfully it didn’t work. Meanwhile, our competitor in New York never had a second conference.
With the path seemingly cleared for Broker Fair, we apparently then irked the ire of Kris Roglieri, the head of NACLB, by saying that our conference would be “the largest gathering of merchant cash advance and business loan brokers in the country.” Although our audience and theirs did not overlap at the time, their email marketing shifted to throwing shade at us for no reason. It seemed, however, that it inadvertently helped us, because by March 30, 2018 we ran into another problem I had not imagined, we were already sold out. Sold out in that if the venue found out how many tickets we had sold versus how many they were physically allowed to have in the space, we were going to get in very big trouble sold out. This was 45 days before the conference!
Being sold out only increased the hype and I didn’t know what to do. Broker conferences didn’t sell out. That wasn’t a thing. Now it had legitimately happened. People noticed and the world began to change. Within two weeks, the National Association of Equipment Leasing Brokers changed its name to the American Association of Commercial Finance Brokers. They said the time had come to be more inclusive of all commercial finance brokers. Others would eventually follow suit.
After we managed to pull off Broker Fair 2018, with a lot of hiccups along the way, we decided that we’d continue to do smaller networking events, including Miami. They’d be deBanked CONNECT MIAMI, deBanked CONNECT San Diego, and deBanked CONNECT Toronto. We also decided to add content and speakers to the mix as well. deBanked CONNECT San Diego 2018 attracted 344 people while deBanked CONNECT MIAMI 2019 brought in 461, a number that shocked us because we had envisioned it as something small and the turnout was in fact very large. For a long time we underestimated registrations and we constantly had to contend with spaces that were too small and sold out signs on our website.
deBanked CONNECT MIAMI 2019 was also the first time we heard people refer to it as Broker Fair Miami. This I guess made sense, because that is what it was fast becoming, but to have every event mimic the New York format with a full day of speakers and pre-show party the night before seemed daunting so I hesitated to change the name of deBanked CONNECT MIAMI to Broker Fair Miami when the formats were slightly different. I also didn’t want to take away from New York being known as the “signature” conference. The demographics were essentially the same, however, and the Broker Fair name seemed to easily roll off the tongue. Americans showing up to deBanked CONNECT Toronto, for example, said that they were excited to be at Broker Fair Canada. deBanked CONNECT San Diego you say? That got referred to as Broker Fair San Diego.
The most striking moment of them all, however, happened after we moved all of our cryptocurrency content off into another brand, one we called deCashed instead of deBanked. deBanked’s wide variety of content had grown an entire following outside of just small business finance and resulted in the experiment of an entirely unrelated networking event in May 2022 called by the same name, deCashed. Although it had a large turnout from the crypto industry, and it was only about crypto, dozens of people from the small business lending space assumed it was effectively Broker Fair Bitcoin, with some attendees flying in from as far as Europe, Canada, and California to say they were excited to be at their first Broker Fair.
Alas, the only event truly called Broker Fair these days remains to be the annual show in New York City (next one is June 1, 2026). deBanked CONNECT MIAMI has now become the biggest of the year, however, surpassing every other event. deBanked CONNECT MIAMI is projected to have more than 1,000 attendees this week. Meanwhile, deBanked CONNECT Toronto got nixed due to Covid and deBanked CONNECT San Diego was replaced by B2B Finance Expo in Las Vegas. The latter one now being a collaboration with a major trade association.
Today, there’s a lot of new events popping up with the word Broker in the name. I’m not surprised. It’s a very important profession. And if you feel the urge to label deBanked CONNECT MIAMI as Broker Fair Miami, you’ll be forgiven. It just means that back in 2017 we did a really good job in picking a name that would stick. On the other hand, perhaps we goofed. It’s become obvious that inside of every deBanked CONNECT MIAMI is a little taste of getting away, like you’re going on Spring Break, something that feels more sensational than a fair. If only there were a word for what it could have been…
See you there.
View PostByzfunder Reports 40% Growth in 2025, Driven by AI Underwriting, ByzFlex Expansion, and a 30% Increase in Customer Portal Engagement
NEW YORK — February 10, 2026 — Most lenders spent the last decade tweaking rates. Byzfunder rebuilt the engine. While the small-business lending industry debated incremental changes — a faster portal here, a new rate sheet there — Byzfunder made a different bet: if the system is broken, don’t optimize it. Replace it.
In 2025, Byzfunder stopped operating like a traditional lender and started operating like a technology company that happens to move capital. Our new approach is opening new doors for small businesses, which in turn is driving tremendous growth for ByzFunder.
Byzfunder today announced 40% year-over-year growth, record originations, higher approvals with improving portfolio performance, and reduced customer friction across the funding journey. The company also reported a 30% increase in customer portal engagement, reflecting stronger customer loyalty and repeat business — driven by increased adoption of self-serve tools, faster visibility into funding progress, and a cleaner end-to-end experience that reduces unnecessary handoffs.
“Most of the industry is still running on static rules and patched-together systems,” said Ilya Fridman, CEO & Founder of Byzfunder. “We built a modern credit engine designed to learn every day. We didn’t aim to be slightly better — we built Byzfunder to be structurally different.”
Byz.AI: From Underwriting Feature to Decision Brain
In 2025, Byzfunder advanced its AI foundation with Byz.AI — not as a feature, but as the decision brain behind underwriting and pricing. Byz.AI evaluates real-time business signals (cash flow patterns, revenue trends, banking behavior, and industry cycles) to deliver faster decisions and more accurate risk-based pricing than static scorecards. And because it continuously learns from outcomes — repayments, defaults, and merchant behavior — it improves as volume scales. When Byz.AI went live, it widened what we could confidently approve: businesses competitors couldn’t underwrite became some of Byzfunder’s strongest-performing customers, helping drive growth without compromising discipline.
ByzFlex: The Product that Changed Repeat Behavior
A defining driver of 2025 growth was ByzFlex, which now accounts for 20% of total originations, making it one of the fastest-adopted products in Byzfunder’s history. ByzFlex gives your business ongoing access to working capital — acting like a business line of credit, but structured as a revenue-based financing. Funding that resets itself as you repay. ByzFlex was built for how small businesses actually operate: not as a one-time advance, but as a repeatable capital layer that can be accessed as needs change — with flexible draws and capital that moves when they move.
Customer Service — And We Mean Real Customer Service
Byzfunder also continued investing in service as a competitive advantage. In an industry known for tickets, hold times, and scripts, Byzfunder’s approach combines real human support with intelligent automation to create a more responsive, partner-like experience. When a merchant calls Byzfunder, they get answers — not a queue. In a commoditized market, experience becomes the moat.
“In SMB funding, service is often treated as a cost center,” Fridman added. “We treat it as a growth lever. When merchants trust the experience, they come back — and they refer.”
Leadership Built for Scale
In 2025, Byzfunder strengthened its operating bench — not by hiring “managers,” but by hiring builders. Entrepreneurs. Operators. People who have scaled companies, not maintained them. New leadership was added across the CMO, CRO, CISO, Head of People, and Head of Sales functions as Byzfunder scales its platform, expands distribution, and builds a team designed to shock the industry.
2026: The Real Leap
Most lenders buy software. Byzfunder is building its own from scratch. In 2026, Byzfunder plans to launch a fully proprietary, end-to-end AI Lending Management System spanning intake, underwriting, pricing, funding, servicing, and collections — with every step learning, every step automated, and every step improving itself. No handoffs. No legacy vendors. No duct tape. Just one intelligent system: a closed-loop credit engine designed to get smarter every day. This isn’t digital transformation — it’s infrastructure replacement.
“SMB lending has been stagnant for years. Same products. Same underwriting. Same excuses,” said Fridman. “That gap created opportunity. We didn’t want to be slightly better — we wanted to be structurally different. The world is evolving faster than most people realize. The lenders who build for tomorrow will own the next decade. We’re not early anymore. We’re accelerating.”
About Byzfunder
Byzfunder is an AI-driven small business funder delivering fast, flexible capital to entrepreneurs underserved by traditional finance. Founded in 2019, the company combines machine learning, proprietary infrastructure, and a service-first philosophy to create a fundamentally better funding experience.
Media Contact
Xin Hamilton
press@byzfunder.com
Lightspeed: ‘our largest use of cash will be growing our merchant cash advance business’
Lightspeed Capital originated $257M in merchant cash advances in the last 9 months of 2025, up from $207M over the same period in 2024. The company has repeatedly talked up the healthy profit margins earned on MCAs and last quarter called them a “super popular upsell.” Lightspeed operates in the POS and e-commerce space, competing against companies such as Shopify, Square, Toast, and Clover. Lightspeed Capital is its MCA business.
“Aside from potential buybacks, our largest use of cash will be growing our merchant cash advance business,” said Lightspeed CFO Asha Bakshani during the company’s recent quarterly earnings call. “There are currently $106 million in merchant cash advances outstanding, and we intend to continue to grow this high-margin business over time.”
Lightspeed MCAs are typically satisfied by merchants within seven months, but they want to shrink that timeframe even more. “Our goal is to target a shorter remittance time frame, and we are making great progress towards that end,” said Bakshani. The average factor rate is a 1.14.
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