The irony of bank lending is that the companies that are safe to lend to, do not need the money. The ones that really need a loan are the ones that might not pay it back. When you do not need to borrow, your bank is constantly trying to encourage you to borrow money. When you really need money, the bank is not interested or wants a very high interest rate to compensate for the risk.

In this case Stripe has the most important information about you, your revenue numbers. So they can judge if you are a good risk or not, plus they spread the risk over many companies. Finally, they avoid the biggest cost on small loans, which is all the paperwork/admin on the backend.

Makes sense. I wonder if they also offered no fees (6,12,24 months) as a form of loan as well if that would be appealing to their customers. At the end of the term, you'd be responsible for paying back all the fees during the term plus interest.