Uber partners with fintech firm Pipe to offer loans to small businesses

Fintech company Pipe is partnering with Uber in a new effort to help small businesses acquire loans with fewer barriers to access, CNBC has learned.

Pipe is teaming up with Uber Eats to add its embedded technology to the company’s restaurant manager app. Eligible restaurants will see pre-approved capital offers from Pipe that are customized based on the businesses’ revenue and cash flow.

The new partnership will start rolling out widely this week on Uber Eats, according to Pipe.

The Uber Eats Manager app for restaurants, which houses thousands of restaurants in the U.S., functions as a one-stop shop for restaurants to monitor and manage their businesses. With the Pipe partnership, restaurants can work with the fintech company on loans directly in the app.

“I think it’s an alignment of wanting to help these small businesses succeed, building the thing that just works to do that and making it so seamless and embedded that the customers don’t even realize somebody else is involved,” Pipe CEO Luke Voiles told CNBC.

The capital process notably does not involve credit checks, FICO scores, personal guarantees or any of the standard procedures used by big banks, according to the fintech firm.

“The No. 1 pain point for small business is access to capital, and in the restaurant space, it’s even more acute,” Voiles said.

Pipe, which has a $2 billion valuation, uses artificial intelligence to determine loan amounts based on six months of anonymous credit card transaction history shared by Uber. Then, within the Uber Eats Manager app, restaurants can choose to share their data with Pipe, submit their application and move forward with the capital.

Pipe has access only to anonymous historical performance data from restaurants on Uber Eats, so offers are based only on those performance metrics, Karl Hebert, Uber’s vice president of global commerce and financial services, told CNBC.

Hebert said the company chose Pipe specifically for its process that is designed for small businesses.

“Uber is focused on helping restaurant partners be successful on Uber Eats,” he said. “This is an opportunity to meet restaurant partners where they are — particularly those who use the Uber Eats Manager dashboard — and we’re eager to see how it’s received.”

Voiles said 98% of the Pipe loans are approved, and the money usually hits accounts within 24 hours. With loans that have fewer barriers to access, he added, the company has seen businesses growing 12% month over month.

“It’s just a way to actually help the restaurant owner that may be an immigrant with no FICO score get access to capital for the very first time, open a second location and double their business,” Voiles said.

Pipe is also setting itself apart from term loans that have fixed monthly payments. Instead, Pipe’s loans for small businesses are flexible with the business’ revenue flow, Voiles said, so even if a restaurant’s revenue decreases, restaurant owners can take their time to pay back the loans.

It’s not the first time Uber has worked toward providing capital to its restaurants. In 2022, the company partnered with Visa to provide $1 million in grants to small businesses on the Uber Eats platform that were affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, natural disasters and other unexpected events.