Latest / Leaders In Payments / The Signal: Embedded Finance: Lending as a Platform Feature with Aarati Soman, Parafin & Jaron Ruckman, NMI | Episode 468

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The Signal: Embedded Finance: Lending as a Platform Feature with Aarati Soman, Parafin & Jaron Ruckman, NMI | Episode 468 · Leaders In Payments

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the Signal, powered by the Leaders in Payments Podcast, where we are cutting through the noise to reveal what truly matters in payments and fintech.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_02: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Leaders in Payments Podcast.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Greg Myers.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_02: And today's special guests are Arthur Solman, the head of product at Parafin, and Jaren Ruckman, product manager at NMI.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: So, Arthur and Jaren, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: This episode is part of our signal series, where we are cutting through the noise to reveal what truly matters in payments and fintech.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: Today we're exploring how embedded lending is transforming the competitive landscape for ISOs and SaaS platforms, moving from a nice to have to absolutely essential.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: We'll explore how AI-powered underwriting, API-first infrastructure, and real-time data are opening new doors for small businesses while creating stickier, more valuable relationships for ISOs and SaaS platforms.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: Arthur, let's start with you.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: Can you walk us through your professional journey and tell us a little bit about what Paraffin does?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm excited to be here.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: I joined Paraffin over three years ago.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, the day that I joined, we launched our Amazon partnership.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: So it was an eventful day.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: And since then, we've been lucky enough to really launch on other Fortune 500 platforms that serve SMBs.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, before Paraffin, I mentioned to you, Greg, that I came from Square where I really saw firsthand how important sort of access to capital was for small businesses, whether they're expanding their footprint or they have an emergency, or, you know, whether it's really at the point of purchase and they're looking to manage their cash flows.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, what we get really excited about is partnerships like NMI, where we're really able to provide small business capital to their customers.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, Jaron, same question for you.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: Can you walk us through your professional journey and tell us a little bit about NMI?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I started with what was called Iris CRM back in 2013 and was initially the first support person in the company and eventually moved to become the product manager.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: And in early 2022, we were acquired by NMI.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And there was an effort there to bring several crucial elements together into a modern payments ecosystem that was ultimately going to become one unified platform.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: So now NMI has gateway, we have payments, we have a CRM, we have underwriting tools, we serve ISOs, ISV banks, and anyone else that will that will have us in the payment space.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Jaron, sticking with you, there's this trend in vertical SaaS platforms that's evolving into where they're becoming the financial hubs for their customers.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: And we're going to peel that onion back today.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: But in your opinion, what unique advantages do SaaS providers have over traditional lenders when it comes to delivering financial products just at the right moment?
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'd say the first component of this is knowing that merchants need capital.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not news to anyone, but the merchants aren't confident that they can get it with traditional means, or at least they're not confident that they can have success with it.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: So if you can't offer great pricing, a variety of products and flexible products, then the merchants will just move on.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: The second component that's really important for SaaS is meeting the merchants where they are.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: So InMI has a number of tools with which merchants are engaging, and embedded SaaS products like these are what bring the opportunity for the merchants to the tools where they already live and through a relationship that they already trust, which I think is crucial, without having them go to additional platforms, having different logins and dealing with prohibitive or confusing pricing.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: Arthur, over to you.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_02: So do you think that this embedded lending that we're talking about is really a strategic differentiator for ISOs and SaaS platforms?
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: And if so, why do you think that?
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we've seen that you know embedded lending really becomes table stakes for payments these days and as they're looking to acquire and retain merchants.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, if you zoom out, the margins can be pretty tight and it's hard to differentiate purely on price.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so the question really becomes how do you drive stickiness to Jaron's point?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: And how do you build those long-term relationships that go beyond processing?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: And embedded lending is one of the best solutions.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's uniquely positions ISOs to essentially become a bigger value add for that merchant.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, what we do is we work with the payments companies to get daily transaction behavior, cash flow patterns, seasonality patterns on their merchants.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: And really, that helps us create an underwriting model that is much more sort of meritocratic and it enables us to offer capital to even those that, if they were to go to a traditional bank, they would essentially be locked out.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so this combination of sort of how I think about contextual placement from within, you know, where you are doing business on a daily basis on platforms like NMI, as well as sort of meritocratic underwriting, it's a really powerful combination that sort of accrues value back to NMI and provides merchants the ability to grow through capital.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, Arthur, sticking with you, and and you talked about this payment margins are shrinking.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I think payments alone can't really provide that stickiness for the for the SaaS companies anymore.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it still does, but probably not as well as it could or has in the past.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: So can you walk us through how embedded capital specifically helps these vertical SaaS companies and ISOs?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: How does it help them compete with the likes of Stripe and your former employer Square?
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: I saw this at Square.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: Square obviously started as a payments company right around 2013.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: We launched our first experiment in capital, and we saw that grow.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: And Stripe and Square have both set a pretty high bar, right?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: And they win because they own the payment flow, they own the data, they offer capital as a native part of their experience.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: And ISOs have those similar advantages, especially merchant trust and vertical expertise.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: And what embedding capital can really do is level the playing field.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so it lets ISOs compete on value, not price, right?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: So they can offer financing that's really tied to merchant cash flow.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: They can keep merchants from being pulled into the closed ecosystems of Stripe and Square.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: And really like embedded lending lets ISOs deliver what Stripe and Square are delivering without giving up sort of the independence of the merchant relationship.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Jaron, over to you.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: So before we get into the more technical aspects of embedded lending, let's address sort of what I call the elephant in the room, which is regulation.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: How do you balance moving fast with innovation while ensuring you're building a compliant, responsible lending product, especially as a non-bank distributor?
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: So the key here we found is leaning on and working with our partner, Paraffin, and their knowledge of the regulation as well as that of their bank.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: So we are admittedly not experts in the lending area.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so we evaluated several vendors over several months.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: We selected Paraffin based on how we expect them to treat merchants, and of course, knowing that they offer loans within the bounds of those regulations, so that we can see the program being successful long term.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: The next most important piece that we've touched on is using an embedded component for the experience.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: We're 100% sure that what's being shown to the merchant and being said to them is exactly what Paraffin and their bank want to communicate to their merchant.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: There are opportunities that we've seen to do more development and maybe own more of the experience.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: That also comes with the downsides of that time spent and the chance for problems when it comes to the regulation.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: We want to make sure that we're giving exactly what we want, when we want to that merchant.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: Artie, I wanted to ask you about regulation.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: I I know we were going to jump into underwriting, but I would love to hear kind of your thoughts on that.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well said, Darren.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think what you know Paraffin's goal is really to handle everything that's hard about lending, right?
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Whether that's capital, risk modeling, compliance headaches, servicing, regulatory compliance, that is really our job.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, if we're doing our jobs well, then our partners really have to think about their core business and lean on us to do embedded lending well.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, to Jaron's point, we offer flexibility when it comes to how our products are embedded.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: So if a partner simply wants to embed what we lovingly call our widget, it's a component that SMBC and their kind of merchant portal, then great, we can we can embed our widget.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: If they want to work with our APIs to build their own front end for merchants, we can enable that as well.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's different ways to integrate and create that embedded experience for merchants.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, our goal is to make our partners' lives easy and lend in a way that's that's really compliant and really handle all of the things that come with lending.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_02: And sticking with you on the first question about underwriting.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, as everyone knows, AI and machine learning are really transforming underwriting basically in real time.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_02: So, how are these technologies actually changing the game for small business lending, both in terms of like the speed and the accuracy, and what does this mean for businesses that traditionally struggled with access to capital?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this is where you know I think Parafin has really innovated.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: We started out really leaning on sales data from our partners like NMI, right?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: We take that data and we underwrite the merchant, and we have complex ML models that help us understand the health of the business.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Where we're innovating is in addition to the sales data, we are also now leveraging the merchant's bank data, so transaction data that they provide to us directly.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: We're leveraging third-party data.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: So things like bankruptcy filings, you know, difficulties with management of their cash flow.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: LLMs really help us is taking all of that unstructured data, structuring it, and underwriting the merchant in real time.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: So what you gain is speed, accuracy, as well as recall.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: You're able to do this at a scale that we we previously weren't able to do it at.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: And what all this means for small businesses is previously where it was like a lockbox FICO score, a personal FICO score, that, you know, for many SMBs, their personal FICO doesn't even reflect the health of their business, right?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so what we are unlocking for them is a much more kind of meritocratic health data-based underwriting.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: And what we find is our ability to make some make an SMB eligible as a result is a lot greater.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: And our offer terms are a lot more fair.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: And we're able to track them over time if their business is doing well.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: We can offer them more.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's just unlocking, you know, a capability that previously was not possible for us.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: And the way I think about AI is it's a force multiplier in what we do.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um so everything we were doing in the past, where we're able to do that at scale, at greater speed, with greater accuracy.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: Well, just sticking with you, Artie.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: So you mentioned a little bit of this, but gonna kind of change the direction a little bit.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: So beyond the traditional credit bureau scores, which we know you know all lenders use, what other type of alternative data you mentioned, the bankruptcy reporting, but what type of that kind of data are you seeing that's making the biggest difference in these lending decisions?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, how does that open doors for the more, let's say, underserved small businesses?
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: When I think about what types of data, you know, transaction consistency, revenue trends for a platform, refunds, disputes, seasonality patterns, and then their expense profile, right?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: This is all their revenue profile.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: How about their expenses?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: What are they spending money on?
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: Do they have existing debt?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Are they spending their money, you know, efficiently?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what does their debt to revenue ratio look like?
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and then there's like publicly available information, like, you know, bankruptcy filings, et cetera.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then the last kind of category is how are they doing online?
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: What are their Yelp reviews look like?
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: What are customers saying about them?
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really a 360-degree evaluation of a business when we make a decision to fund them.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Jaron, we're going to go over to you.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: But this question's for both of you.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_02: But Jaren, we'll start with you.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: So let's talk about, I call it the plumbing.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe not the best word, infrastructure, but but I think plumbing really, if people can visualize the plumbing, but API first and modular infrastructure.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: So that's kind of the topic.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_02: So for these ISOs and software companies, you know, what should they be looking for in a platform that really helps them ensure that there's, you know, a quick time to market, you know, without getting bogged down and doing a lot of development, you know, kind of what are your thoughts on that?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and and one way that we can do that through our integrated components here with Paraffin before anybody does any development is because we have platforms that merchants already exist in, we're we're able to get a partner live offering lending without them doing a second-of-development work.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: So if there is a plan to do that development work, but they say, well, I need to get lending out there now.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: I want to start with something.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: I want to start that discussion with merchants or I want to start that flow, we can offer it in our portals, both the Merchant Central CRM and our gateway portal that merchants access.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: And even if they don't access those platforms, if we've got information, we can give them an email.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: So just like a virtual terminal can get somebody processing payments before they've got a hardware device in hand, we're able to get people with the loan offers before they even do development work.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in the future, we may also have another integration method where a partner can bring that lending module that we've gotten from Parafin into their own merchant experience.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: We're working with ISOs, ISV banks, and more.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: So that's an area that we're really heading towards, which is that modular approach to functionality delivery where our partner can take what they want and put it where they want it.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, Arthur, any thoughts on that?
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think I think to Darren's point, you know, contextual placement is key to drive adoption with small businesses.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so if we're able to enable ISOs to place these modules where they think their merchants are really going to find them helpful, that's sort of good news and a win-win-win for everyone.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: The way I think about it is if you give merchants capital at the point of their pain, you know, when they're running low on cash flow, when they're having that emergency.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're top of mind at that time, you really provided great value to them.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, and so contextual placement is really what differentiates, you know, a good lending product that's at the point of pain versus versus not.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't really talk about this, and you kind of talked about it there a little bit with the placement.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: But what is that sort of you know, merchant experience like?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_02: So they they see the widget wherever, you know, it's placed for them and they take action on it.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: Sort of can you walk through what that looks like?
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: The way this works is NMI will provide anonymize sales information on merchants to paraffin.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: Paraffin will underwrite based on that sales information as well as information we collect from third parties and provide back NMI with offers for those merchants.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Now, merchants get to discover these offers through the widget component that's within the NMI ecosystem or that's within the ISO ecosystem.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so once they discover their offer, it says, hey, you have$30,000 and you're pre-approved for that amount because we have pre-underwritten them based on that sales data.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so then the SMB can click in, and from then on, it's really a paraffin-owned experience.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, they can see their offer terms, they can see pricing, they can slide around a little bar or toggle that shows them how much they can receive and kind of the corresponding pricing and payback period.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: They go through the flow, they fill out KYC information, they connect their bank account so we can provide them with capital, and then they can look at our terms and service and accept the agreement.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: And at that point, within one to two business days, we can turn it around and provide capital into their bank accounts.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: When they pick up the phone and call if they have questions or service issues, is that you or how does that work?
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: It is paraffin under the hood.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: So we provide you know all customer support, all of our customer support agents are actually based here in the United States.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: We provide business hour support, email support, and we also obviously have FAQs for the program.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: So if a merchant has a question, they can you know look it up.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: We've started to leverage AI for customer support more and more, and it really helps us tackle the most complex inquiries from customers leveraging humans so we can really curate that experience for those tough customer experiences.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: Well, a couple of final questions.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna break this last one into kind of two, and and Arthur, gonna start with you.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: Looking ahead, so where do you see the biggest opportunities or challenges in the embedded lending space over, say, the next two to three years?
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I I see I see a ton of opportunity.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think this approach of sort of one size fits all working capital is short-lived.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, small business owners have a range of problems that they're facing and offering them the right capital product at the right moment is sort of where we see the trend going.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, if it's a short-term cash crunch on inventory, that product is going to look different than if they want a long-term payback type product.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: If they're spending money on things like payroll or equipment purchasing, that product looks a lot more like pay over time versus your typical nine-month term loan.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so where we see innovation is really around developing the right types of products based on use cases and then placing them contextually in front of small businesses.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: So they don't have to take any detours really to access that capital.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: There is no, you know, giant application form that they need to fill out.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's a quick process and it's surfaced to them at their point of pain.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think there are any challenges coming up?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think in terms of challenges, so one challenge, you know, I will I will mention is how do we effectively enable ISOs to have the same level of modularity and experience as the corporate entity?
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: So NMI obviously partners with a ton of sub-platforms.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: And how do we enable the same capabilities when you know ISOs have their own branding?
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: ISOs have their own marketing that they they are marketing to their own small businesses.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, how do we take what we have built at Paraffin and offer it not just to folks like NMI, but also to their sub-platforms via NMI in a really effective and responsible way?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_02: So, Jaron, over to you.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: So, so again, opportunities and challenges for the embedded lending space over the next couple of years.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_02: Your thoughts?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: On this one, I really have to echo uh to a couple of Artie's points there.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we we know that there's a lot of players in merchant lending, and offering the right amount of options to the merchant is key.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we found that, of course, you want to offer flexibility on where the product is offered.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: So we talked about before, different platforms that they're already in, not being too many maybe points of communication, but also a choice of products without being overwhelming.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: So we've seen a lot of success with the Flex Loan, which is repayment based on future sales, and there's there's other products that could be appropriate for merchants as well.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: And you also want fast funding.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: That that could be potentially a challenge.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: People see how fast transactions happen and they're expecting funding to be you know just as quick or at least to occur for them.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: So for the merchant, I think they they really see that.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, the partners want to know that their merchants are getting funded quickly so they see success.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: So as long as we we don't see slower funding or a confusing experience as friction points or blockers, then we we think we can excel in both of those areas.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: So, Jaron, one last question, um, actually for both of you, but Jaren, we'll stick with you.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: If a platform, whether it's an ISO or a vertical SAS platform or even a bank is really looking into offering these kind of products to their merchants and they want to get started, say, over the you know, next couple of months, what is your advice for them as they start to kind of explore this space we're talking about?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'd say definitely to look at the platforms where these these products are offered.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I expect that the best platforms are going to give you the most information and be as transparent as possible.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what we're aiming to achieve with everything that we give to our partners and put in front of the merchants.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd say that uh transparency is key in any kind of research.
• 22:11
  unknown: Okay.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: Arthur, same question for you.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: What kind of advice would you give them?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: I would say three things.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: One, look at the breadth and depth of the offering that the partner is bringing to the table.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: Look at ease of integration and do the teams make it really easy for platform partners to work with them.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then look at sort of longevity of these programs.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: The last thing you want is to rip and replace your credit or capital provider.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so one of the things that we pride ourselves here at Paraffin is the history that we've had over the last five years of lending and lending in an embedded way and doing it effectively for our partners.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm going to ask one final question for both of you before we wrap up.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: If there's just one takeaway, if you could kind of summarize what all we've said into just one takeaway, Jaron, what would that one takeaway be for the payments leaders that are listening to this episode?
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think it would absolutely have to be that lending does not have to be complicated.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have to be scary, and it can absolutely be profitable in all the good ways.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I love it.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: So, Arthur, your your final uh takeaway.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I guess mine would be you know, embedded lending is moving from nice to have to being table stakes.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: Pick your partner wisely.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_02: Love it.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: So that's a great way to wrap up the show.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: So, Jared and Arthur, thank you both for being here.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: I know your time is very valuable, so I really appreciate you being on the show today.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: And to all you listeners out there, I thank you for your time as well.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: And until the next story.