Square Capital provides loans to restaurants through new partnership with Upserve

Square Inc. has joined forces with restaurant technology startup Upserve, formerly Swipely, to provide Upserve customers with access to loans through Square Capital.
Square Inc. has joined forces with restaurant technology startup Upserve, formerly Swipely, to provide Upserve customers with access to loans through Square Capital.

PROVIDENCE – Square Inc. has joined forces with restaurant technology startup Upserve, formerly Swipely, to provide Upserve customers with access to loans through Square Capital.
This is the first time Square, based in San Francisco, has extended credit to businesses that operate outside of its own payments processing system. Approximately 7,000 restaurants across the country use Upserve’s technology to manage more than 20 million meals per month. More than 2 percent of all U.S. full-service restaurant sales run on Upserve Payments, which processes more than $8 billion dollars in annual volume, the company said.
Restaurants use Upserve to optimize menus, check staff performance, build guest profiles, track reviews and organize key information into one place.
“This partnership with Square further cements our dedication to helping restaurants thrive in all parts of their business. Providing our customers access to Square Capital opens up new opportunities for improvement and growth whether it be in location expansion, new equipment or investments in technology that help modernize their operations. We can’t wait to see what our customers will do with an infusion of fresh capital through our partnership,” Dave Hoffman, vice president of business development at Upserve, said in a statement.

Jacqueline Reses, head of Square Capital, said the company is “proud to partner with Upserve” and offer loans to small businesses that “traditionally face barriers when seeking access to funds.”
“Square and Upserve share a passion for empowering businesses to grow and achieve their goals, and a crucial component to success is access to capital,” Reses said.
Citing the 2015 Small Business Credit Survey from the Federal Reserve, access to capital is one of the biggest hurdles in making business growth a reality, with more than one-third – 39 percent – of small businesses that apply for loans being denied or only partially funded, the companies said.
The companies said in a news release that there are more than 1 million restaurant locations in the U.S., of which nine in 10 have less than 50 employees and seven in 10 are single-unit operations. They also said that the current restaurant workforce comprises 10 percent of the overall U.S. workforce and that 1.7 million more restaurant jobs are expected by 2026.
“Providing access to capital can help drive forward growth and expansion of an industry that generates more than $780 billion in sales annually,” the release said.

Eligible Upserve customers will receive loan offers directly within their Upserve Smart Management Assistant portal with funds available as soon as the next business day upon approval. Eligible Upserve customers will begin receiving loan offers through Square Capital in the coming weeks.
Repayment works like this: Restaurants pay a fixed percentage of their daily sales, with the option to repay early at no additional fee. All loans are issued by Celtic Bank, a Utah-chartered industrial bank.
“Square Capital is making very nice money on the business,” Mark Palmer, an analyst at BTIG LLC, told Bloomberg News. “As they continue to develop a track record for lending and you see default rates stay low and their access to small businesses increases, it stands to say that the number of investors attracted to the platform should increase as well.”

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