Embedded lending platforms: six providers compared

An embedded lending platform lets a software, payments or retail company offer credit inside its own product while another party makes the loan or buys the receivables. This list covers six providers that sell that service to platforms: ChargeAfter, Lendflow, Liberis, Parafin, Pipe and YouLend. For each one it shows who is lender or funder of record, the published funding model, regions, integration docs and whether pricing is published.

Selection criteria for this list

A provider is listed if, on July 14, 2026, all four points below held:

1. It sells embedded lending or financing to other companies, for those companies to offer their own customers, not only direct to borrowers.
2. The product is live, shown by named partner programs.
3. It publishes enough to identify who makes the loan or buys the receivables for at least one product.
4. It publishes integration material: an API reference, an SDK or developer pages.

Banks’ own programs are out of scope, as are data and infrastructure firms that do not arrange credit. Stripe Capital for platforms is left out because the provider directory already covers it under Stripe Connect; Stripe’s disclosures name YouLend as the provider of Stripe Capital merchant cash advances in the US. Inclusion is not an endorsement, and no provider paid to be included. The methodology page sets out how these lists are built, and the lending software section covers the wider market.

Embedded lending platforms at a glance

Rows are alphabetical and the order carries no meaning. “Not published” means the provider does not publish the item.

None of the six publishes a rate, a fee schedule or a revenue-share percentage.

Three funding models in the list

Four providers fund the financing themselves and put the platform’s brand on it. Liberis, Pipe and YouLend sell merchant cash advances repaid as a percentage of sales, and Liberis says it “owns eligibility and risk”. Parafin sells both kinds: a cash advance it buys itself and a loan and line of credit issued by Celtic Bank. Providers write the advances as a purchase of future receivables rather than a loan. Platforms in this model earn a share of the fee, which none of them discloses; b2b embedded finance covers how these arrangements are built.

Lendflow is a marketplace for small business credit. A brand adds a widget or an API call and applications go to lenders in its network, which Lendflow’s post of July 14, 2026 puts at “75+ lenders through a single integration”.

ChargeAfter is a marketplace for consumer point-of-sale financing. Each approving lender makes and funds the loan, while ChargeAfter routes the application through a waterfall from prime to near prime to subprime options, and banks can white-label its Lending Hub to run programs of their own.

The providers

ChargeAfter

ChargeAfter asks merchants to “Effortlessly integrate multiple lenders into your point of sale”. Company figures on that page count 40 lenders and three countries, and the lenders page names the USA and Canada. Through those lenders a merchant can offer revolving credit, private label cards, lease-to-own, installments, BNPL and B2B terms. Integration runs through e-commerce plugins for Magento, Shopify and BigCommerce, a client-side SDK, a REST API or a hybrid, across e-commerce, in-store, call center and in-home channels. ChargeAfter says its fee structure varies by business model and volume and is quoted on request.

Lendflow

Lendflow sells widgets, landing pages and one API into its lender network, covering term loans, SBA financing, invoice factoring and MCAs. Its terms of service, dated May 20, 2026, state that “Lendflow is a not a creditor” and that it is not a party to the financing agreement; applicants must be US entities. The advertiser disclosure says Lendflow and its partners may be paid by lenders. Lendflow says a white-label widget launches in under two weeks and a full API integration in 30 to 45 days, under one of three pricing options, self-managed, managed or hybrid, whose prices are not published. Named brands on its homepage include Stax Payments, Experian and Buildertrend; named lenders include OnDeck, BHG Financial and eCapital.

The California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation lists Lendflow, Inc. with “NMLS # 2234899 License # 60DBO-198376” and a consent order dated October 8, 2025. The order found that Lendflow engaged “in the business of a broker without obtaining a license” from 2020 to 2025. Without admitting or denying the findings, Lendflow agreed to a desist-and-refrain order, a “$210,000.00” penalty and $40,000 in investigative costs, and the DFPI agreed to issue a California Financing Law broker license on payment of the initial $150,000.

Liberis

Liberis calls itself “an embedded finance partner for platforms”, naming vertical SaaS providers, marketplaces and payment companies in a release of March 31, 2026 that also announced a Canada launch with Elavon. Its capital platform, launched September 3, 2025, carries five products: Starter Capital, Working Capital (a merchant cash advance), Flex Capital (line of credit style funding), Pay with Liberis (BNPL at checkout) and Investment Capital (term loans). Working Capital runs from “$1k – $1m” for “One fixed fee” repaid as a share of future revenue, with the rate unpublished. In the UK its merchant portal states the Business Cash Advance is “a form of receivables finance not a loan”, that Liberis is not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and that the Financial Ombudsman Service cannot consider a complaint about it; the company is registered in England and Wales as No 5654231. On June 18, 2026 Nordic Capital agreed to acquire Liberis and combine it with Qred, a bank, subject to regulatory approvals and closing conditions; Liberis says partners keep “the same Liberis relationships and integrations” and puts its network at over 30 partners across Europe, the UK and North America.

Parafin

Parafin says it manages “underwriting, compliance and risk, servicing, and support” for a platform’s capital program. Its products are Term, a fixed-term loan, Flex, revenue-based financing whose repayments adapt with daily sales, Pay Over Time and Spend cards. A case study of January 7, 2026 states that “All loans are issued by Celtic Bank”, and the line of credit agreement names Celtic Bank as originator and creditor. The cash advance is Parafin, Inc. buying future receivables, with the agreement stating that “THE PURCHASE OF FUTURE RECEIVABLES DOES NOT AND SHALL NOT CONSTITUTE A LOAN”. Spend Cards are issued by Column N.A. and powered by Marqeta. On September 29, 2025 Parafin announced its first off-balance-sheet commitment, with Cross River Bank’s Principal Finance Group committing to buy up to $360 million in assets. Integration comes in no-code, low-code and custom API tiers, and the platform earns a share of the capital fee at an undisclosed rate.

Pipe

Pipe says it “serves platforms that help small businesses grow, including payfacs, vertical SaaS, marketplaces” and sells a merchant cash advance in which a business sells part of its future revenue for up-front capital. A partner disclosure of June 9, 2026 names Pipe Advance LLC in the US and Pipe Advance CAN LLC in Canada, both subsidiaries of Pipe Technologies Inc.; in the UK the program comes from Pipe Technologies UK Limited, which states that “Pipe is not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority”. On licensing, Pipe says MCAs are not regulated as credit in the UK or US and that “Pipe has registered in all states which currently require it” for sales-based financing. A February 3, 2025 release puts a Pipe-hosted launch at about a week, an embedded UI at one to two weeks and a full API integration at as little as four weeks. Funding comes from Pipe’s “capital markets partners”, which it does not name. Merchants pay one flat fee, which Pipe illustrates rather than publishes.

YouLend

YouLend offers white-label financing it says can be live on a platform, in the platform’s branding, within a week, with no coding, upfront cost or capital from the partner. Its products are Cash Advance, revenue-based financing, and Instant Settlement, early access to receivables from sales; partners can offer them “without any liability”, though a partner may provide its own capital and make its own credit decisions. The public docs cover the UK, the United States, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Poland, Ireland, Belgium and Spain, with US calls on a separate youlendapi.us base URL. For US originations, a forward-flow agreement announced March 3, 2026 gives Värde the potential to purchase up to $225 million in receivables. YouLend’s own regulatory page states that YouLend Limited is “authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) as a payment institution” with firm reference number 947287, and that its UK merchant financing agreements are not FCA regulated for the purpose of providing business financing.

Rules for the lender of record

The creditor carries the notice duties. Under Regulation B a creditor must tell an applicant what it decided within “30 days after receiving a completed application”. For business credit, where the applicant’s gross revenues were $1 million or less in its preceding fiscal year, other than trade credit and factoring-related credit, the creditor follows the consumer rules except that the statement of action taken “may be given orally or in writing”; for larger businesses the notice is due within a reasonable time.

Marketplaces change who owes the notice, not whether one is owed. When an application goes to more than one creditor and the applicant accepts or uses credit from one of them, the others need not notify. If no credit is offered, each creditor taking adverse action must comply, “directly or through a third party”, and a third-party notice must disclose the identity of each creditor it covers. An official interpretation treats factoring, the purchase of accounts receivable, as “not subject to the Act or regulation”; the comment addresses factoring only.

Small business lending data collection is the other federal item. The CFPB’s revised Section 1071 rule, published May 1, 2026, is “effective on June 30, 2026” with a compliance date of January 1, 2028. It “excludes merchant cash advances (MCAs), agricultural lending, and small dollar loans” from covered credit transactions and raises the origination threshold from 100 to 1,000 transactions for each of two consecutive years. Where several institutions touch one deal, the CFPB’s FAQ says an origination counts for “the last financial institution with authority to set the material terms”.

State law reaches loans and advances separately. The California Financing Law requires licensing of finance lenders and brokers making and brokering consumer and commercial loans, and a broker licence authorises brokering only to licensed finance lenders; the Lendflow consent order above is a documented enforcement example. California’s commercial financing disclosure regulations, effective December 9, 2022, cover installment loans, open-end credit, commercial factoring and merchant cash advances, and New York’s Commercial Finance Disclosure Law requires standardised disclosures for commercial financing up to $2,500,000. This section describes published rules and is not legal advice.

Questions to ask before signing

• Who is the lender or funder of record for each product, named in the contract?
• Is the product a loan or a purchase of future receivables?
• Who sends adverse action notices, and whose identity do they disclose?
• Which states and countries are covered, and on which registrations?
• Which integration tier applies: hosted page, embedded component or full API?
• Are the merchant fee and the platform’s revenue share written into the contract, given that none of the six publishes them?