Cross River Teams With SmartBiz on SMB Financing

Small business-focused artificial intelligence (AI)-powered financing platform SmartBiz has teamed up with financial services company Cross River to help more small businesses across the U.S. improve their core infrastructure and embedded financial solutions.

Cross River will add SmartBiz’s digital application to its existing tech stack to streamline the process for small businesses to obtain funding, with Cross River boosting the financial services on the back end, according to the joint announcement Tuesday (July 12). SmartBiz uses AI-driven processing to connect more entrepreneurs with business loans.

“We’re thrilled to join forces with SmartBiz to make an elevated SBA financing experience more readily accessible to small business customers,” said Eli Hazan, head of business lending at Cross River, in the joint announcement. “SmartBiz is at the forefront of the loan optimization process, and like Cross River, is operating at the intersection of cutting-edge technology and stellar customer service.”

The need for increased capital is especially important for small businesses more than two years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our technology does the heavy lifting by automating as much of the process as possible, and our dedicated customer support team assists entrepreneurs through the entire application process,” said Evan Singer, CEO of SmartBiz. “We’re proud to integrate this technology with Cross River as we know they share our goal of equipping every entrepreneur with access to smart capital.”

Related: FuturePay Partners With Cross River for Credit Platform

Last month, Cross River signed an agreement with digital revolving credit solutions provider FuturePay for its MyTab credit platform. Together with Cross River’s banking capabilities, MyTab aims to provide credit access for consumers and FinTech services for merchants.

The platform lets consumers apply for a credit line that can be used and reused over time, helping merchants to work with long-term customer relationships in a bid to get repeat or subscription purchases.

For all PYMNTS B2B coverage, subscribe to the daily B2B Newsletter.