I suppose there are 2 sides to the equation. Our industry has been seriously lacking the growth it deserves for years. From a financial services standpoint the ENRITRE MCA space is smaller than half the average size of a single hedge fund. To us insiders the MCA/Loan space seems much bigger and more important that it really is to the rest of the business world.

If our industry has the potential to become a 3, 5, or even $10B industry then there is exponentially more room to grow than we think. Amex and Kabbage and the likes help from a growth standpoint. More mainstream acceptance = much larger pool of potential clients.

Then there's the scary side of the equation. Amex, Kabbage, maybe even Google and others are very large, well known, and well capitalized businesses. They will have a competitive advantage in being "found" by a prospect. I suppose it's safe to say that they can grow their book faster than the founding fathers of the industry.

One thing in the Kabbage article that is noteworthy is that they can only do offline businesses who use quickbooks. That's how they underwrite. Pretty smart way of doing it imo but there are about 4 million quickbooks users and many of them aren't fundable by anybody. Also, many businesses that use quickbooks keep awful records. I've seen plenty myself. If I was going to underwrite using quickbooks data I would definitely prefer data coming from an accountant vs a backroom bookkeeper or business owner.

Another thing about large companies coming into the industry is that they have much larger overhead in comparison to small nimble funding companies. Our company can beat any offer than AdvanceMe puts out. It's simple math though. We can be more profitable at a lower return.

The entire move towards large firms entering the space is glass half full or glass half empty depending on how each individual funding company is positioned in the market. Personally, I'm not overly thrilled about Kabbage's move but then again we've been successful acquiring with plenty of large competitors already in place. Time will tell.