How OnDeck's 93% Growth Confidence Report Reshapes Bank Verification Software for Funders

93% Growth Confidence, 76% Bypassing Banks: What Funders Need to Know

A new report from OnDeck, published via PR Newswire, reveals that 93% of small businesses in the United States expect growth in 2026. That headline alone signals robust demand. But the second finding is what should keep every MCA funder's attention: 76% of those businesses are now bypassing traditional banks entirely when they seek capital. The implications for bank verification software for funders are immediate and structural.

When three-quarters of the small business market routes around conventional banking channels, the volume doesn't disappear. It redirects. It flows to merchant cash advance providers, revenue-based financing companies, and online lenders. Every one of those applications still requires cash flow validation, identity confirmation, and bank statement analysis before a responsible funder can approve it. The difference is that the merchant who skipped their bank already demonstrated impatience with slow processes. They expect speed, simplicity, and minimal friction.

For MCA funders, this creates a dual challenge. First, application volume is climbing. Second, the applicant's tolerance for delays is shrinking. Funders who still rely on emailed PDFs, manual spreadsheet entry, and phone-based follow-ups are structurally disadvantaged. As we explored in our analysis of how 76% of small businesses bypassing banks reshapes bank verification software for funders, this isn't a temporary blip. It's a sustained market reorientation that demands new infrastructure.

Why Surging Application Volume Creates an Underwriting Bottleneck

Manual Bank Statement Review Hits Its Breaking Point

Consider the arithmetic. A mid-size MCA funder processing 200 applications per month with a three-person underwriting team might manage the workload when each file takes 45 minutes of manual review. Now imagine that same funder sees volume climb by 40% because more merchants are choosing alternative lenders over banks. Suddenly, the team faces 280 applications with the same headcount. Hiring is slow. Training takes months. Deals start aging in the queue, and merchants move to whichever funder responds first.

Manual bank statement review is the single largest time sink in MCA underwriting. Analysts open PDF after PDF, scan for average daily balances, flag NSF occurrences, calculate monthly deposits, and look for signs of stacking. Each of these tasks is mechanical enough to automate yet consequential enough that errors carry real financial risk. The problem isn't that humans can't do this work. The problem is that humans can't do this work at the speed and scale the 2026 market now requires.

Merchant Speed Expectations in Alternative Lending

The OnDeck report reinforces something funders have felt on the ground for the past two years. Merchants who bypass banks do so precisely because they want faster access to capital. A business owner who chose not to walk into a bank branch or fill out a 20-page SBA application is not going to wait four days for an MCA funder to manually verify their bank statements. They'll submit to three funders simultaneously and sign with whichever one calls back first with an offer.

This is the speed-to-lead dynamic that separates growing funders from stagnating ones. We've covered how speed to lead depends on bank verification software for funders in detail, and the OnDeck data only sharpens the urgency. When your prospective merchant has already rejected the slowest option in the market (the bank), they will not accept bank-level delays from you.

How AI-Powered Extraction Lets Funders Scale Without Proportional Headcount

The answer isn't simply to hire more underwriters. It's to change the ratio of human effort to application throughput. AI-powered document extraction can parse a three-month bank statement PDF in seconds, pulling deposit totals, average balances, overdraft counts, and transaction patterns into structured data fields that an underwriter can review at a glance. Instead of spending 45 minutes per file on data entry, the underwriter spends five minutes on validation and judgment calls.

Let's Submit is built for exactly this workflow. Merchants receive a secure upload link, submit their bank statements and application documents asynchronously, and the platform's AI extraction engine processes everything automatically. By the time an underwriter opens the file, business info, financials, and owner details are already structured and ready for review. The underwriting team's job shifts from data entry to decision-making, which is where human expertise actually adds value.

This matters because the 76% of merchants bypassing banks aren't a monolithic group. Some are strong credits who simply prefer the convenience of online applications. Others are higher-risk borrowers with thin banking histories or seasonal revenue patterns. AI extraction doesn't replace the underwriter's judgment on these cases. It gives them the data faster so they can apply that judgment sooner.

Building Verification Infrastructure for the Alternative Lending Wave

Asynchronous Document Collection Reduces Merchant Friction

One of the most underappreciated bottlenecks in MCA origination is the document collection phase itself. A merchant applies, the funder asks for bank statements via email, the merchant sends partial documents, the funder follows up, and days pass before the file is complete. Every round trip is a chance for the merchant to lose interest or fund elsewhere.

Asynchronous collection solves this by decoupling the merchant's submission from the funder's review. The merchant uploads everything through a single portal at their convenience, whether that's 11 PM on a Tuesday or during a lunch break. The funder's team doesn't need to be online at the same time. When the documents land, AI extraction runs automatically, and the application moves into the review queue with all data pre-populated.

This approach aligns perfectly with the behavior patterns the OnDeck report describes. Merchants who bypass banks are self-directed. They research online, compare options, and make decisions quickly. Giving them a clean, self-service upload experience matches how they already operate, and it eliminates the email ping-pong that kills conversion rates.

Fraud Detection Can't Be Sacrificed for Speed

Higher volume doesn't just mean more good applications. It also means more attempts at fraud. Fabricated bank statements, manipulated PDFs, and synthetic identity submissions all increase when the market expands. Funders who automate extraction without also automating fraud checks are trading one vulnerability for another.

Effective bank verification software catches inconsistencies that manual reviewers miss under time pressure: font irregularities in PDFs, running balance discrepancies, missing transaction sequences, and duplicate statements submitted across multiple funders. AI models trained on thousands of real and fraudulent bank statements can flag anomalies in real time, before the deal reaches an underwriter's desk. The result is that speed and safety aren't competing priorities. They reinforce each other.

Maintaining Audit Trails as You Scale

Regulatory scrutiny of the MCA industry continues to intensify, even with the recent CFPB decision to exclude merchant cash advances from Section 1071 data collection requirements. State-level disclosure laws, particularly in markets like Virginia, California, and Texas, still demand that funders demonstrate how underwriting decisions were made and what data informed them.

When you're processing 50 applications a month, you can maintain audit trails manually. When you're processing 500, you can't. Every document upload, every extraction result, every underwriter review, and every status change needs to be logged automatically. Let's Submit's real-time tracking dashboard provides this visibility, giving compliance teams a complete record of every action taken on every application from submission through approval.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are 76% of small businesses bypassing banks for funding?

Small businesses cite speed, simplicity, and approval likelihood as primary reasons for choosing alternative lenders over traditional banks. OnDeck's 2026 report shows that lengthy bank application processes, strict collateral requirements, and multi-week decision timelines push business owners toward MCA funders and online lenders who can provide capital in days rather than weeks. This shift is accelerating as more merchants become comfortable with digital-first financial products.

How does bank verification software help MCA funders scale?

Bank verification software automates the most time-consuming steps in MCA underwriting: collecting bank statements, extracting financial data, and flagging fraud indicators. Instead of underwriters spending 30 to 45 minutes per application on manual data entry, AI-powered platforms like Let's Submit parse documents in seconds and present structured data for human review. This lets a three-person team handle the volume that would otherwise require eight or ten analysts, making growth possible without proportional headcount increases.

Can AI-powered bank statement analysis actually catch fraud?

Yes. AI models trained on large datasets of authentic and manipulated bank statements detect patterns that human reviewers consistently miss under time pressure. These include font inconsistencies across pages, running balance calculation errors, missing or duplicated transaction sequences, and metadata anomalies in PDF files. The key is that AI doesn't get fatigued at application number 50 the way a human analyst does, so fraud detection accuracy remains consistent regardless of volume.

What is asynchronous bank verification for MCA lending?

Asynchronous bank verification means the merchant uploads their documents on their own schedule through a secure portal, and the funder's team reviews the extracted data whenever it's ready, without both parties needing to be online simultaneously. This eliminates the email back-and-forth that delays most MCA applications and matches the self-service behavior that merchants increasingly prefer. Platforms like Let's Submit provide a dedicated upload link for each applicant, making the process seamless for both sides.

Conclusion

OnDeck's 2026 report makes the market trajectory clear: small businesses are growing, they're hungry for capital, and they're not waiting around for banks to deliver it. The 76% bypass rate is a direct pipeline into the alternative lending market, and MCA funders sit at the front of that pipeline. The funders who will capture this demand are the ones whose verification infrastructure can match merchant expectations for speed without compromising on accuracy or compliance.

Let's Submit gives MCA lenders the tools to meet this moment. Secure upload links, AI-powered document extraction, real-time application tracking, and complete audit trails, all built specifically for the way alternative lending actually works. Visit letssubmit.ca to see how asynchronous bank verification fits into your workflow and start converting surging demand into funded deals.