Thread by @peterrenton

These articles about the negative role fintech played in the PPP cannot go unchallenged. I have some very strong feelings on this topic that I will share in this thread. washingtonpost.com/business/2022/…

I am both a supporter of #fintech and the recipient of two PPP loans that saved our business.

The days in early April 2020 are burned into my memory as we witnessed the world falling apart with millions of people were losing their jobs every week. As a small business owner, we needed capital and we needed it FAST.

In those critical first days, most large banks were unable or unwilling to help. Those fintech-centric banks like @crossriverbank and @CelticBank worked quickly to build front ends that could process many applications.

@KabbageInc and @PayPal also began accepting applications for partner banks.
Marketplaces like @Lendio and @fundera here hiring large numbers of people to process loans for dozens of bank partners. Fintech was coming to the rescue of millions of small businesses in desperate need

If you cast your memory back to those early days in April 2020, speed was the most important factor. Millions of small businesses were on the brink of collapse. They needed funds in days, not weeks or months. Fintech provided that speed.

Now, whenever there are hundreds of billions of dollars being handed out by the government it will attract the fraudsters. Of course, they swung into action as well, and many billions of dollars were sent to bad actors.

But I would argue that cost was worth it to save the millions of jobs that were about to be lost.

Some of the allegations against fintech companies in the WaPo article were pretty egregious and if true, those fintech executives who committed crimes should be arrested and charged. But please don't paint the entire industry with that same brush.

I believe we could have lost millions more jobs in the early days of the crisis but for the quick action of fintech companies. Most banks were simply unable to move that fast.

As I wrote back in June 2020, it was a coming of age for fintech and helped usher in a new wave of innovation. news.fintechnexus.com/with-the-ppp-f…

The country needed fintech companies to get this money out and we responded. While there may have been some bad actors amongst us, the vast majority of people I know worked Herculean numbers of hours to help save American small businesses. And they succeeded.

In our own case with the PPP money we were able to keep staff on much longer and while we eventually had to do layoffs, we are now back with more staff than in February 2020.

Without both rounds of the PPP, I don't think we would have made it.