Transforming small business lending

Small-business and SBA lending oftenmanual workflows, inconsistent documentation, and limited visibility into real-time financial performance. Parlay Finance, an AI-driven Loan Intelligence System (LIS), integrates with Mastercard Open Finance to give community lenders access to digital workflows and real-time cash-flow analytics—enabling faster, more confident, and more inclusive underwriting.

Small business lenders are often face:

• Variety of documentation from small businesses
• Inefficient manual data collection
• Difficulty evaluating thin-file or no-file applicants
• Slow processes that reduce approval rates

Mastercard provides real-time, permissioned cash-flow insights — including balances, revenue trends, and transaction patterns — allowing lenders to assess a business’s true operational performance, even when traditional documents are limited.

Parlay's Loan Intelligence System (LIS) automates document collection, data verification, eligibility screening, and deal structuring before anything enters the origination process. Borrowers connect their bank accounts directly through an intuitive digital experience, providing permissioned, real-time financial data without the friction of manual document collection. The result is qualification in 48 hours instead of two weeks, which leads to lower operational costs, and an increased capacity to serve more small businesses without adding headcount.

By pairing Mastercard’s API-driven financial insights with Parlay’s workflows, lenders can reduce time-to-decision and receive more complete financial data, especially for nontraditional or underserved borrowers.

Access to capital remains the No. 1 barrier to growth for small businesses, and this combination enables broader approval capacity for thin-file or underserved entrepreneurs, supporting more inclusive lending outcomes while maintaining strong risk controls. 

Real-time data offers lenders early visibility into deteriorating or improving cash-flow conditions, improving portfolio management and long-term loan performance.

These capabilities came to life for Pathway Lending, a community development financial institution in Tennessee. Pathway’s mission is to advance sustainable communities, and with Parlay powered by Mastercard Open Finance, it was able to do just that. Before implementing these solutions, it took 14 or more days to process a $ small business loan. With the new solutions, Pathway transformed its small-business lending operation; today, it approves three times as many small businesses for larger loans. It reduced processing time by 86 percent to two days and has confidence that these small businesses have adequate cash flow to meet their future obligations. It has been able to identify issues earlier in the application process and direct its efforts towards the appropriate programs for its borrowers.

 “With Parlay and Mastercard, we are able to streamline our operations, support significantly more small businesses than before, and sustainably approve more businesses for loans,” Diego Eguiarte, SVP of Small & Emerging Business Lending at Pathway, said. 

Together, Parlay and Mastercard Open Finance help lenders:

• Increase small business loan approvals
• Reduce manual workflows and operational costs
• Deliver faster, more confident decisions
• Support more underserved businesses
• Improve risk-adjusted returns and portfolio health

This data-to-decision ecosystem helps lenders modernize small business lending and remain competitive in an increasingly real-time financial environment.

Small business and SBA lenders lose hours chasing documents and checking eligibility before a deal ever reaches underwriting. Parlay Finance's AI-native Loan Intelligence System (LIS) cuts manual work to qualify a deal by 80% — automating intake, document processing, and deal structuring upstream of the Loan Origination System (LOS) — so lenders can close more loans without sacrificing credit quality. See how at www.parlay.finance.