Lending platform Kabbage raises $135M to expand its technology

Kabbage, a small business lending platform, has just landed $135 million in investor funding to give global businesses more access to its cash reserves.

The new round of funding is supported by major industry players including ING, Santander InnoVentures, and Reverence Capital Partners, as well as China-based Yuan Capital, Japanese Recruit Strategic Partners, and Scotiabank in Canada.

[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1821017,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"business,","session":"D"}']

The company delivers verdicts on business and consumer loans in six minutes. Kabbage considers a business’s banking information and QuickBooks data, as well as circumstantial data–like customer interactions on a Facebook business page–in determining whether to grant up to $100,000 credit lines to small businesses. In total, it refers to an average of five data points per loan applicant, though it has a relationships with 23 data providers including Amazon, Bigcommerce, eBay, Etsy, Facebook, Google Analytics, Intuit, PayPal, Shopify, Sage, Square, Stripe, Twitter, Xero, Yahoo, and Yodlee.

The company says that social data can be a great indicator of a business’s ability to repay a loan.

“We used a model [for judging applicants] that only used Facebook that was as predictive as only using a FICO score,” said Kathryn Petralia, cofounder and operations chief at Kabbage.

Unlike other newfangled lending platforms, Kabbage is not a peer-to-peer lender; it’s a balance sheet lender. The company has a credit facility supported by Guggenheim Securities, which has grown from $270 million to $900 million in a little over a year. The company now supports $1 billion in loans, annually.

With the new funding, Kabbage plans to license its technology to banks and others, giving the company further opportunity to monetize its product. It also plans to expand internationally. Already, the company has a presence in the U.S., U.K., and Australia, but Kabbage hopes to grow throughout the rest of Europe. It also has its eye on Latin America for 2016.

In total, the company has raised over $240 million in equity funding, plus an additional $360 million in debt financing. Existing investors BlueRun Ventures, UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund, and Thomvest Ventures also contributed to the round.