We hear consistently from our SMB customers that access to financing is a primary obstacle to growth, and that they’re not getting what they need from traditional lenders. We launched Stripe Capital to help fill this gap. Now, to quantify the impact, we completed a two-year randomized trial that directly compared Stripe businesses that accepted Capital financing to similar Stripe businesses that didn’t. 

We found that businesses that accepted financing saw revenue on Stripe grow 27 percentage points faster than their peers, on average. We also found that for some businesses, the impact was even greater: the top decile of businesses, by growth rate improvement, saw a 211 percentage point average boost as a result of accepting financing.

Read on to learn how we proved the causal impact of financing on business growth, which kinds of businesses are most likely to see strong results, and how the emergence of nontraditional lenders is poised to increase global GDP. 

Proving causation in two distinct time periods 

Though it’s intuitive that accepting financing would spur growth, this causal relationship is difficult to prove: the same factors that make a business more likely to receive financing (good credit, high revenue, business longevity) also make it more likely to succeed, with or without an injection of capital. The scale of Capital—in 2025 alone, we provided financing to 76,000 businesses—made it possible to solve for these confounds. We designed a randomized control trial that compared the subsequent on-Stripe revenues of businesses that accepted financing to businesses on Stripe with similar credit, revenue, and longevity profiles that did not have access to Capital. 

We ran the experiment twice to confirm that the growth effect was persistent. Our first trial ran from 2020–2021, and we found a striking outcome: an average boost of 114 percentage points to growth rates from financing. But it was likely that at least some of the divergence in growth trajectories was driven by COVID-19-era macroeconomic conditions: low inflation, large swings in GDP growth, and a trend to more ecommerce. Our more recent study—which ran from 2023–2025—took place in a very different economic climate, and found that the boost to growth rates remained strong at 27 percentage points on average. 

An outsized impact on small businesses and those with forward-looking plans for their financing 

Though we saw a strong average effect on growth rate, results varied greatly. Which characteristics made a business more likely to succeed with financing than others? Here’s what we found.

Financing drives significant growth for the smallest businesses on Stripe 

For businesses processing between $3,000 and $76,000 annually on Stripe, Capital drove a 33 to 43 percentage point average boost to their growth rates compared to peers. Within this bucket, we could isolate an even stronger effect if we looked at businesses processing less than $52,000 annually on Stripe that also had top-tier business credit scores: they saw a 94 to 106 percentage point average boost to their growth rates.

These very small businesses are often the ones that struggle the most to secure timely financing from traditional banks. As one Capital recipient said, “Traditional banks just don’t understand how difficult they make the loan process” by requiring “days of completing endless application forms and providing extensive supporting documentation.” Many small business owners don’t have the time or resources to successfully complete these applications, and decline rates are nearly 50%—even for established businesses operating over 10 years.

With Capital, our more complete view of small businesses’ payment trends lets us speed up the process and reach a broader swath of SMBs. Stripe Capital can get financing to an SMB within 1 to 2 days on average, compared to 14 to 40 days at traditional banks. And our data shows that even for small businesses with low or unavailable credit scores, financing sparks growth. After accepting Capital offers, these Stripe businesses saw a boost of 11 to 18 percentage points to their growth rates on average compared to their peers.

Businesses that use financing for forward-looking projects saw higher growth rates 

We complemented our experiment with a follow-up survey of around 900 Stripe businesses that participated, and we found that a business’s plans for using its new funding were strongly correlated with how much its growth rates improved.

Among SMBs with top-tier credit scores, those that reported using their financing for growth-oriented goals (selling new products, starting new projects, scaling up the business) saw boosts to their growth rates of 70 to 95 percentage points on average.

When we talk to businesses using Capital, we can see this effect in action: a new initiative, followed by significant growth. Luis Mayendia, the cofounder and CEO of the parking reservation company MyPark, shared that he used Capital to “scale the business by building and deploying additional machines, which started generating revenue immediately.” For Richard Blakely, the cofounder and CEO of Xirsys, financing through Capital allowed the TURN infrastructure company to expand to new markets: “We used the advance to set up servers in China, India, and Japan—allowing us to reach customers all over the world. Since then, we’ve seen our annual revenue more than double.” 

Looking forward

The World Bank estimates that in developing economies, there is a $5.7 trillion gap between funding sought and obtained by SMBs. Our findings from Capital suggest that nontraditional lenders can play a significant role in growing the global GDP by closing this gap. 

When financing programs are integrated with the tools SMB owners already use to run their operations, access broadens in ways that go beyond greater eligibility. Stripe Capital makes offers proactively, based on payment processing data, and this can encourage SMB owners to pursue growth opportunities they might not otherwise have considered. As one business owner told us, “I am being cautious about growth—maybe a little too much, but this loan was the right size and helped me take a little risk that I probably would not have taken.” 

Platforms and marketplaces are well-positioned to do the same for the SMBs they serve, and they will be key allies in closing the funding gap. These providers make it possible for many SMB owners and sole proprietors to get started in the first place, and they see their impact on SMBs grow considerably when financing is part of the picture.

“Stripe Capital is especially valuable in the current environment—where credit card borrowing limits and lines of credit are being cut. For some, it means filling a short-term cash flow gap; for others, it unlocks the ability to invest in new employees, equipment, or marketing,” said Laura Collinson, VP and GM of payments and fintech at Jobber.

If you’re a business owner, learn more about how Stripe Capital could work for you.

If your business is a platform and you’d like to start your own financing program, learn more about how to get started with Stripe Capital for platforms.

Stripe Capital offers financing types that include loans and merchant cash advances. All financing requests are subject to a final review prior to approval. In the US, Stripe Capital loans are issued by Celtic Bank, and YouLend provides Stripe Capital merchant cash advances. In the UK, France, and Germany, Stripe Capital loans and merchant cash advances are provided by YouLend and its affiliates.