A business owner fills out one form, sees offers from several lenders, and never receives a bill from the website that showed them. The website still gets paid. Understanding who pays it, and when, explains a lot about which offers appear first and why the cost of a loan is what it is.
This piece is written for brokers, agencies, accountants and software companies who refer business owners to funding or are thinking of running a marketplace themselves. It draws on what the public companies in this market disclose in their own filings and on what regulators now require.
What is a lending marketplace?
A lending marketplace takes one application from a business and routes it to several lenders, then shows the business the offers or matches that come back. It is not the lender. The lender underwrites, funds and services the loan.
Lendio states this directly on its own site: "Lendio is not a lender and does not make credit decisions," and "Not all financing options available in the market are listed on this platform" (Lendio). NerdWallet describes its Fundera unit, in its 2025 annual report, as a small business financing marketplace that helps businesses with lender matching, product comparisons, intake support and introductions to financing partners (NerdWallet Form 10-K for 2025).
Scale is the selling point. Lendio says it works with "more than 100 lenders and funders" and has helped fund more than 520,000 small businesses with over $17 billion since 2011, a total it notes includes Paycheck Protection Program loans (Lendio). Its "how it works" page refers to a network of 75+ lenders (Lendio: How it works), a reminder that network counts on marketing pages are not audited figures and are not always consistent.
How lending marketplaces make money: four revenue models
Most of the money comes from lenders and financial partners, paid per request, per funded loan, per renewal or through broader marketing arrangements. The public filings show each of these.
1. Fees when a request is sent to a lender
LendingTree's 2025 annual report says it generates revenue from its network partners "generally at the time of transmitting a consumer request to them," in the form of a match fee. It describes a network of approximately 770 partners (LendingTree Form 10-K for 2025). In this model the marketplace is paid for the introduction, whether or not a loan closes.
2. Fees when a loan funds
The same filing says that "in certain instances outside our mortgage business we charge other kinds of fees, such as closed loan fees." Lendio's disclosure says it may receive compensation from lenders "for referrals or funded loans" (Lendio). In this model the marketplace is paid only when the business actually receives money.
3. Fees on renewals
Business financing often renews. LendingTree's 10-K reports a contract asset of $28.0 million at December 31, 2025 "for business loan renewals," which means it books revenue it expects to collect when previously referred business loans renew. For a marketplace, a borrower who renews is worth more than one introduction.
4. Partner marketing and referral arrangements
NerdWallet's 10-K says its marketplaces generate revenue primarily through referral fees and partner marketing arrangements. Its small business line has been under pressure: NerdWallet reported $100.0 million of revenue from small and mid-sized business users in 2025, down from $109.8 million in 2024, a drop of about 9%. Fourth quarter 2025 SMB products revenue was down 12% year over year, "primarily due to continued headwinds in organic search traffic" (NerdWallet: Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Results).
LendingTree moved the other way in the same period. Its fourth quarter 2025 release reported small business revenue up 78% from a year earlier, and total 2025 revenue of $1,117.3 million against $900.2 million in 2024 (LendingTree: Fourth Quarter 2025 Results).
Key takeaway: A marketplace paid per request wants volume. A marketplace paid per funded loan or renewal wants approvals that stick. Knowing which model a platform uses tells you what it is optimizing for.
Embedded marketplaces: the same money, a different storefront
An embedded marketplace runs inside another company's website or software, so the business owner applies without leaving a platform they already use. The lender still pays, and the host platform may share in that revenue.
Lendio's embedded financing page describes an application "skinned with your brand's look and feel," a configurable marketplace where the partner chooses which lenders and products appear, and deployment "with a single line of Javascript." It lists target partners such as healthcare, construction technology, transportation technology and retail platforms, and says partners can unlock "a new revenue stream," without publishing revenue share terms (Lendio: Embedded financing). Our research on how embedded lending works covers the structure in more depth.
The economic logic is that the host platform already has the customer's attention and data, so the marketplace pays less to acquire the borrower. Whether that saving reaches the borrower depends on the lenders' pricing, not on the storefront.
Who ultimately pays the marketplace fee?
The borrower usually pays nothing directly, but a fee paid by the lender is a cost of acquiring that loan and lenders price their products to cover their costs. You will rarely see the marketplace's cut as a line item.
That is changing for some products. Virginia requires a sales-based financing provider to disclose, at the time of a specific offer, whether it pays compensation to a broker and the amount (Va. Code § 6.2-2231). California's AB 2116, signed in September 2026, will require commercial financing brokers to post the average and maximum APRs of deals they facilitated in the prior year, according to Morrison Foerster's analysis.
A worked example shows why the disclosure matters. Suppose, using round numbers for illustration only, a Virginia offer shows $50,000 of funding and discloses $2,500 of broker compensation. That fee equals $2,500 / $50,000 = 5% of the funding. A business comparing two offers with the same headline payment can now see which one carries more intermediary cost. Without the disclosure, both look identical.
On SBA loans, federal rules already require the agent's compensation agreement to be provided to SBA, and they generally bar an agent from being paid by both the applicant and the lender for the same work (eCFR: 13 CFR Part 103).
Does the model create a conflict of interest?
It can, and at least one large marketplace says so in plain words. Lendio's disclosure says compensation it receives "may impact the placement of financing offers" (Lendio). NerdWallet's 10-K says its reviews and ratings are unaffected by product placement on its platform, and its small business loan methodology states that "NerdWallet's business relationships have no impact on our star ratings" (NerdWallet: small-business loan ratings methodology). Ratings and placement are different things: a product can be rated fairly and still be shown first because it pays more.
The borrower side of the data suggests the stakes are real. The Federal Reserve's 2026 Report on Employer Firms found the share of financing applicants who sought money from online lenders rose from 17% in the 2020 survey to 29% in the 2025 survey. Among borrowers, 60% at online lenders said costs were higher than expected, compared with 37% at small banks and 32% at large banks (Federal Reserve Banks: 2026 Report on Employer Firms). Online lenders are not the same thing as marketplaces, but many marketplace offers come from online lenders.
Your data is part of the product
Many lending sites ask for contact and business details before they show any pricing, and that information has value to lenders. The Federal Reserve Board and the Cleveland Fed reviewed 10 online small business lender websites in 2019. They found visitors often had to submit personal and business information before seeing cost details, that every lender reviewed reserved the right to contact users with the information collected, and that each of the 10 sites used at least eight trackers (Federal Reserve: Uncertain Terms, 2019).
A per-request model makes a business owner's application the thing being sold. If you refer clients to a marketplace, read its privacy policy and ask how many lenders receive each application.
How to evaluate a marketplace before you refer clients
Ask how it is paid, how it orders offers, and what the borrower sees before agreeing. These questions can be answered from public pages or a short call:
- Payment model. Is the platform paid per request, per funded loan, per renewal, or a mix? Lendio and LendingTree both disclose theirs in public documents; others should be able to tell you.
- Placement. Does compensation affect the order of offers? Lendio says it may.
- Cost disclosure. Does every offer show an APR or total cost, not only a factor rate or daily payment? Our guide to merchant cash advance costs explains the difference.
- Data sharing. How many lenders receive each application, and can the business opt out of calls?
- Regulatory footprint. Is the platform registered or licensed where your clients are, for example in Texas or Virginia for sales-based financing? Our guide on becoming a business loan broker lists the state rules.
- Credit pull. When does a hard inquiry happen? Lendio says applying will not affect personal credit but that "accepting a funding offer may result in a hard credit inquiry."
Loanistry is owned by Trulli, which runs a lending platform for brokers, agencies and software companies: trulli.ai.
Sources
- Lendio: Small business loans home page and disclosures, checked November 2026
- Lendio: How it works, checked November 2026
- Lendio: Embedded financing, checked November 2026
- LendingTree: Form 10-K for fiscal year 2025, checked November 2026
- LendingTree: LendingTree Reports Fourth Quarter 2025 Results, checked November 2026
- NerdWallet: Form 10-K for fiscal year 2025, checked November 2026
- NerdWallet via Business Wire: NerdWallet Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Results, checked November 2026
- NerdWallet: Ratings Methodology for Small-Business Loans, checked November 2026
- Virginia Code: Title 6.2, Chapter 22.1, Sales-Based Financing, checked November 2026
- Morrison Foerster: California Expands the California Financing Law to Include Small Business Commercial Financing, checked November 2026
- eCFR: 13 CFR Part 103, Standards for Conducting Business with SBA, checked November 2026
- Federal Reserve Banks: 2026 Report on Employer Firms, checked November 2026
- Federal Reserve Board: Uncertain Terms, What Small Business Borrowers Find When Browsing Online Lender Websites, checked November 2026