Partnerships and SoFi’s Galileo BNPL Expansion Lead FinTech IPO Index 1.3% Higher

Bank earnings start Friday.

That means we’ll get management commentary on everything, from interest rates to loan performance to consumer spending.

The read across will be there for the members of the FinTech IPO Index, who are depending on some of those macro trends to drive their own results. But in the lull before the earnings wave crashes down, a number of partnerships dominated the FinTech landscape, helping push the Index up 1.3% through the past five sessions.

Year to date, the Index is up 25.4%.

Performance was uneven through the week, and most names moved up or down mid-single digit percentage points.

Expanding BNPL to Small Business Channels

SoFi’s stock gained 10%.

As noted here, SoFi’s Galileo Financial Technologies has expanded its Galileo Buy Now, Pay Later offering, in partnership with Mastercard, so that lenders can offer it as a service for their small business clients. In PYMNTS’ own coverage of the launch, David Feuer, chief product officer of Galileo, said that that the current financial services landscape is a challenging one for smaller firms — and especially so for the smallest of the small, the sole proprietorships that help power the U.S. economy.

“It’s not simple for small businesses to get a loan,” he said, “even if it’s a small loan.” As part of the joint efforts between in Galileo and Mastercard, he said, lenders can leverage the data they have on hand to provide SMBs with proactive offers that take into account the company’s financial health and ability to repay the BNPL loan.

“Banks are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their use of data, and their use of AI [artificial intelligence], to make intelligent decisions about who to make their offers to,” he said. Payment terms, he said, will typically mirror retail BNPL structures, where there will be, commonly, four payments, with 25% due upfront.

Asked by PYMNTS about risk management, Feuer said that banks are “in a unique position” that gives them a “35,000-foot view” of the SMB’s cash inflows, outflows, income sources and bill payments.

Elsewhere, Marqeta stock was up 1.8%.

The company spotlighted two customer relationships that highlight the continued pivot of the retail sector toward eCommerce. Those partnerships are with Extend, to deliver product replacements via a virtual card, and Financeit, to provide point-of-sale financing for the home improvement sector in Canada, for projects up to $50,000.

Blend Labs was up 2.5%.

The firm said this week that it has partnered with MeridianLink to deliver what it terms a “more streamlined” digital lending experience. Through the integration, lenders using MeridianLink Consumer will use Blend’s unified platform and consumer banking origination software to speed the onboarding and application process for banking, credit card and loan products. Blend had already been integrating with MeridianLink Mortgage.

nCino shares slipped 3.5%.

The company said this week that Honor Bank, a full-service community bank in Northern Michigan, has gone live on the nCino Cloud Banking Platform. The bank implemented nCino’s Commercial Banking Solution within a six month, accelerated timeframe.