Starting a business is just a huge dream for several individuals. They believe that owning a business is their escape from poverty. Meanwhile, others say that you couldn’t be a real businessman if you did not study business. It’s not true at all.
Uber Eats has tapped Pipe, a financial technology company, to help aspiring business owners start their own firms but providing them with capital, ridesharing media has learned.
Fintech companies use technology to provide, improve, or automate financial services, questioning and challenging traditional methods with innovation, efficiency, and accessibility for consumers and businesses.
Their products comprise mobile banking applications, digital payments, crowdfunding platforms, cryptocurrencies, and so much more, making financial services available to people and areas previously underserved by conventional banks.
Pipe, also referred to as Pipe Technologies, helps small businesses grow with fair and unbiased capital and financial tools, empowering entrepreneurs to scale and just keep building. In other words, it is indeed their responsibility to provide capital for businesses, so Uber Eats saw this as opportunity.
Uber Eats is teaming up with Pipe to add its embedded technology to the restaurant manager app of the company. Eligible partner restaurants will see pre-approved capital offers from Pipe customized based on the revenue of the businesses and their cash flow.
The platform’s manager app for restaurants, home to thousands of restaurants in the USA, works as a one-stop shop for diners, so they could monitor and manage their businesses. With this partnership, restaurants could work with the fintech partner to access money directly via the app.
Pipe’s chief executive officer, Luke Voiles, told Ridesharing Forum, “The [number one pain point] for small business is access to capital, and in the restaurant space, it’s even more acute… I think it’s an alignment of wanting to help these small businesses succeed, building the thing that just works to do that and making it so seamless and embedded that the customers don’t even realize somebody else is involved,”
What’s good is that the flow of capital from Pipe to the businesses does not involve credit checks, FICO scores, personal guarantees, or any standard procedures that big banks use, which is easier for these aspiring amsll entrepreneurs.
“Uber is focused on helping restaurant partners be successful on Uber Eats,” Uber stated about this deal. “This is an opportunity to meet restaurant partners where they are – particularly those who use the Uber Eats Manager dashboard – and we’re eager to see how it’s received.”
However, Pipe is clarifying that these capital support must be repaid. Unfortunately, yes. The capital of Pipe for small businesses is flexible with the revenue flow of the business, so even if the restaurant revenue decreases, restaurant owners could take their time to pay it back.
It is not the first time Uber has taken the effort to provide capital to restaurants. They did a partnership in 2022 with Visa to provide $1 million in grants to small businesses on the Uber Eats platform, particularly those affected by calamities and unexpected events.
This new partnership will begin rolling out widely this week on Uber Eats.