Why Platform Capital Is the Alternative Merchants Increasingly Weigh
A merchant who processes payments through PayPal, sells through Shopify, or runs a point-of-sale system through Lightspeed increasingly has a funding offer sitting inside a tool they already use, no application, no broker, no separate underwriting conversation. That is the structural competition an MCA broker’s own offer is up against for a growing share of merchants, and the scale behind it is real enough to name directly rather than wave at generally.
PayPal Is the Largest Name in This Data, by a Wide Margin
PayPal has funded more than $30 billion cumulatively in business loans and merchant cash advances as of March 2025, per an official PayPal release quoting Michelle Gill, PayPal’s EVP and GM of SMB and Financial Services. The company had previously announced surpassing $10 billion by the first quarter of 2019, having started its working-capital program in the fall of 2013, meaning the most recent $20 billion of that total was funded in roughly six years, a materially faster pace than the program’s first six.
Shopify Capital’s Growth, and Its Own Delinquency Signal
Shopify Capital originated $1.4 billion in business loans and MCAs in the first quarter of 2026 alone, up from $821 million in the same quarter a year earlier, a product mix of roughly 82% loans and 18% MCA, per Shopify’s own Q1 financial disclosure. The same disclosure reports a real caution alongside the growth: 10.8% of loans originated in 2025 with outstanding balances were more than six months behind their original payment schedule as of March 31, 2026, a delinquency signal worth reading alongside the origination growth, not separately from it.
Stripe Capital: A Real Count, With an Important Gap
Stripe Capital originated 81,000 merchant cash advances and business loans in 2025, a figure Stripe itself has disclosed. The dollar volume behind that count has not been disclosed by Stripe; a commonly cited $800 million to $1.2 billion estimate is an analyst inference based on comparison to Square Loans’ historical performance, not a Stripe-published number, and should not be repeated as a hard fact. Separately, a Stripe-cited internal study found businesses that accepted a Capital offer grew 27 percentage points faster over the following year than comparable businesses that did not, though the underlying study itself was not independently linked or verified in this research pass.
Pipe’s Sharp Decline, and Its Own Rebound Signal
Pipe originated $300 million in MCAs across 15,000 merchants over the two years through early 2026, a sharp decline from $1.2 billion originated in a single year, 2021. The company’s own revenue tells a different, improving story in the same period: $7.1 million in 2024, tripling in 2025, alongside a fresh $16 million funding round raised in April 2026. Pipe has also moved into embedded MCA financing through platform partnerships, including with Uber Eats as of September 2025, a structural bet that its future growth runs through platform integration rather than direct origination volume alone.
Lightspeed Capital’s Revenue Growth Outpaces Its Balance Growth
Lightspeed Capital funded $350 million in the twelve months from March 31, 2025 to March 31, 2026, with MCA-specific revenue growing 73% year-over-year, according to CFO Asha Bakshani on the company’s quarterly earnings call. Notably, merchant cash advances outstanding grew a more modest 12% year-over-year over the same period, a gap Bakshani attributed to a payback period that declined to seven months, a 13% improvement, meaning capital is cycling back faster, beyond simply growing in raw balance.
Reading These Five Figures as One Picture
This is reasoning, not a separately cited statistic: taken together, these five companies show platform capital scaling unevenly, PayPal’s cumulative total and Shopify’s quarterly growth both point sharply upward, while Pipe’s multi-year total sits well below its single-year 2021 peak. No single trend line describes all five. What they share is structural: each is originating funding from inside a platform a merchant already uses, the exact frictionless positioning an MCA broker’s own outbound pitch has to work harder to compete against as this channel keeps growing.
The Numbers
PayPal has funded more than $30 billion cumulatively in business loans and merchant cash advances as of March 2025, up from $10 billion by Q1 2019.
deBanked, PayPal Exceeds $30B in Business Loans and Merchant Cash Advances
Shopify Capital originated $1.4 billion in Q1 2026, up from $821 million in Q1 2025; 10.8% of 2025-originated loans were 6-plus months delinquent as of March 31, 2026.
deBanked, Shopify Capital: $1.4B in Business Loans and MCAs in Q1
Stripe Capital originated 81,000 MCAs and business loans in 2025; dollar volume was not disclosed by Stripe.
deBanked, Stripe Capital Originated 81,000 MCAs and Business Loans in 2025
Pipe originated $300 million across 15,000 merchants over the two years through early 2026, down from $1.2 billion in 2021 alone.
deBanked, Pipe Originated $300M in MCAs in Last Two Years, Bouncing Back
Lightspeed Capital funded $350 million from March 2025 to March 2026, with MCA revenue growing 73% year-over-year and the payback period falling to 7 months.
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- deBanked, PayPal Exceeds $30B in Business Loans and Merchant Cash Advances
- deBanked, Shopify Capital: $1.4B in Business Loans and MCAs in Q1
- deBanked, Stripe Capital Originated 81,000 MCAs and Business Loans in 2025
- deBanked, Pipe Originated $300M in MCAs in Last Two Years, Bouncing Back
- deBanked, Lightspeed Capital’s MCA Revenue Grew by 73%