Kabbage, which provides working capital to online merchants, is expanding to the UK, the company’s first market outside the United States.
The Atlanta-based company enables online merchants and sellers on marketplaces like eBay, Etsy, and Amazon to get capital they otherwise wouldn’t qualify for at a bank. Many small businesses and online merchants can’t receive financing from traditional banks and don’t want to risk using personal assets like a house to qualify for business loans. Kabbage is disrupting this space by providing a painless way to help these sellers access cash quickly and easily.
Kabbage uses dozens of data sources, including sales and credit history, customer traffic and reviews, and prices and inventory compared to competitors to determine seller business performance, and it provides funding to businesses in fewer than seven minutes.
Kabbage, which faces competition from On Deck and Capital Access Network, has raised $56 million from Thomvest, UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund, Mohr Davidow Ventures, BlueRun Ventures, SV Angel and others.
With the UK being one of the largest sources of e-commerce spending in Europe, the expansion of merchant lending in the country could provide real value for small businesses that are selling on marketplaces like eBay and Amazon. And Kabbage has to move fast in terms of expansion, as Amazon could be entering the space in a big way soon.