A simpler, smarter way to fund growth

Fundwell was founded with a simple mission: to make business financing fast, transparent, and fair. The company’s AI-powered platform helps small businesses access tailored funding options—with quick approvals, clear terms, and no surprises.

But Fundwell’s ambitions go beyond lending. The team is building a full suite of digital and financial tools designed to help businesses manage money more efficiently—from accessing capital to handling receivables, payables, and payments.

When Fundwell partnered with Plaid, the goal was clear: remove friction for applicants, improve mobile application rates, and streamline underwriting with real-time, verified data. The results speak for themselves—faster approvals, fewer drop-offs, and a smoother experience that gives business owners the confidence and clarity to move forward.

Plaid: Tell us a bit about Fundwell’s mission and the businesses you serve.

Sruli: Fundwell exists to help business owners access and manage capital with speed, transparency, and trust. Whether it’s an early-stage startup or an established enterprise, we want to take the complexity out of financing. Our platform uses data and automation to deliver the right funding options quickly—so owners can spend less time applying and more time growing.

Plaid: What challenges were you running into before working with Plaid?

Sruli: Quite simply, our application and underwriting process had some major friction points. Applicants were required to upload PDF bank statements, which created significant drop-off—especially on mobile, where abandonment rates were staggering. Moreover, the manual process left us vulnerable to fraudulent documents, eating up hours of our underwriting team’s time. Ultimately, this slowed approvals, created unnecessary back-and-forth with applicants, and limited our ability to scale effectively. We knew we needed a faster, more secure solution to connect to bank data.

Plaid: What made Plaid the right fit?

Sruli: Plaid checked all the boxes: trust, technology, and ease of use. Its direct bank connections removed the need for uploads, giving us instant access to verified data and dramatically improving conversion rates. Applications that used to take seven or eight minutes now take about four and a half—sometimes even less than three. Desktop completion jumped from 78% to 87%, and mobile saw the biggest lift: from 53% to 83%. Android users, who once converted at a mere 19%, now complete at more than 82%. Those are game-changing results.

Plaid’s identity verification tools also strengthened KYC compliance without adding steps for applicants, who already recognized and trusted the Plaid name. It helps them feel secure right from the start.

Plaid: How has this impacted your team behind the scenes?

Sruli: Plaid has been a massive efficiency boost. Our underwriting team no longer spends time verifying questionable statements—we can focus entirely on qualified applicants. That means faster decisions, quicker funding, and less back-office costs. It’s also opened the door for our marketing team to scale campaigns confidently, knowing applicants can get through the process seamlessly.

Plaid: Speaking of growth, Fundwell has begun to expand beyond lending. What does that evolution look like?

Sruli: We’re transforming from a financing provider into a full financial growth platform. Funding will always be the core of what we do, but we’re now expanding into areas like receivables, payables, and embedded payments. The goal is to provide businesses with a single platform to manage cash flow end to end—so they can not only access capital but also control how it moves in and out of their operations.

Plaid: In what ways does Plaid fit into this evolution?

Sruli: We’re planning to bring Plaid into other parts of our platform, starting with merchant onboarding. We’ll use Plaid to access real-time banking data to help with pre-qualification and underwriting. Long-term, we see Plaid as a core part of our platform for fraud prevention, compliance, and financial connectivity.

Plaid: What advice would you share with other fintechs or lenders thinking about using Plaid?

Sruli: Take the time to really understand what Plaid can do—it’s a powerful toolkit. Once you know your use cases and integrate the right products, the impact on conversion, security, and user trust is immediate. For us, it’s been transformative.