I have already reviewed OnDeck, because they are one of three on my Fintech IPO watch-list.

The good news for small business owners: lots of startups are going after this space and competition is good.

The bad news for small business owners: you still pay a lot more than seems reasonable when base rates are so low.

Kabbage must be doing something right – or be very good at pulling the wool over investor’s eyes (which seems unlikely). From Crunchbase:

Funding Received

^$465.4 Million in 10 Rounds from 13 Investors

Most Recent Funding

^$50 Million Series D on May 5, 2014

Kabbage is a big data play. Basically you allow Kabbage access to a lot of sites that have financial data on your business and it automatically aggregates that, applies some algorithms to create a credit score. That works from an adoption POV, because we are used to granting sites access to our data on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, so its no such a big stretch to add access to our bank account, accounting system, credit card processor etc.

So, how does Kabbage compare to OnDeck? This site has done the testing. They also added PayPal Working Capital, but I don’t view that as a mainstream option as it is only for advances against PayPal revenue. Their summary:

Kabbage is Perfect for the 1 or 2 person eBay, Amazon, or Etsy merchant. They are approximately half the cost of a traditional merchant cash advance.

Rate is 8 % – 24%. That is a pretty wide spread. Zero origination fee. No personal guarantee. Kabbage looks like a good entrant into a huge broken market.