The Capital Button Is Moving Inside the Software—And Business Loan Brokers Are Getting Squeezed Out

When 350,000 small business owners can access financing without leaving their accounting software, who's left looking for a broker?

The News: Fundbox Embeds Directly Into Wave

On November 19, 2025, Fundbox announced a partnership with Wave, the accounting and financial management platform owned by H&R Block that serves over 350,000 small business owners and solopreneurs across North America.

The integration places Fundbox's financing solutions directly inside Wave Perks, the platform's hub for business tools and services. Wave customers can now explore and apply for capital in a few clicks without ever leaving the software they already use to manage invoices, payments, and bookkeeping.

"Small business owners face ongoing challenges balancing cash flow while growing their companies," said Adnan Glavas, Director of Partnerships at Wave. "By partnering with Fundbox, we're bringing our users a seamless and trustworthy way to access the capital they need."

In recent months, the Fundbox has also partnered with:

• EverCommerce — Integrating into Joist and Invoice Simple, serving 350,000+ contractors and home service professionals

• FreshBooks — A long-standing partnership providing invoice financing to freelancers and small businesses

• Nav — Embedding pre-approved offers into Nav's SMB financial health platform

• SoFi — Providing capital access to SoFi's small business members

Since 2013, Fundbox has helped over 150,000 small businesses access more than $6 billion in capital. Its strategy is clear: become the invisible capital layer inside the tools small businesses already trust.

Why This Matters Beyond the Press Release

Here's what the partnership announcements don't say: every business owner who gets a financing offer inside their accounting software is one fewer prospect entering the traditional broker pipeline.

This isn't speculation. It's math.

When a contractor using Joist sees a pre-approved capital offer pop up in their dashboard, a high percentage of the time, they're not Googling "business loans near me." When a freelancer in FreshBooks clicks through to Fundbox, they're not filling out a lead form on a broker's website. When a Wave user explores financing through Wave Perks, they're not calling an ISO.

The embedded lending model doesn't just compete with brokers; it intercepts borrowers before they ever know they're borrowers.

The Funnel Is Leaking From the Top

Traditional business loan brokerage depends on a simple premise: business owners who need capital will go looking for it, and brokers can position themselves to capture that search.

But embedded lending changes the sequence. Capital finds the business owner—at the exact moment their software detects a cash flow gap, an overdue invoice, or a growth opportunity.

Consider how the merchant journey has shifted:

The Traditional Path:

1. Business owner recognizes need for capital

2. Researches options (Google, referrals, ads)

3. Encounters broker marketing

4. Submits application to broker

5. Broker shops deal to lenders

6. Funding decision and disbursement

The Embedded Path:

1. Business owner uses accounting/invoicing/POS software

2. Platform surfaces pre-qualified offer based on real-time data

3. Owner clicks to accept

4. Funding decision and disbursement

The embedded path eliminates steps 2, 3, 4, and 5 entirely. And those are precisely the steps where brokers add value and capture margin.

---

The Numbers Paint a Stark Picture

McKinsey research found that in one major European market, the acquisition cost of a qualified SMB lending lead is 15 to 20 times higher for traditional channels than for embedded finance channels.

Why such a dramatic difference?

Automated qualification: Embedded platforms leverage transaction data, invoice history, and cash flow patterns to pre-underwrite borrowers at near-zero marginal cost.

Contextual timing: Offers appear when business owners are already thinking about money—reviewing invoices, processing payroll, managing expenses.

Trust transfer: The platform has already earned the user's trust. That trust extends to the embedded financing offer.

Self-disqualification: Borrowers who don't fit the credit criteria never enter the funnel as unqualified leads, because the offer simply doesn't appear.

Meanwhile, brokers compete for the same shrinking pool of borrowers through paid search, lead purchases, cold outreach, and referral relationships, all with rising costs and declining conversion rates.

The Market Is Moving Fast

The embedded lending market is growing at a 19.6% compound annual rate, projected to expand from $7.65 billion in 2024 to $45.74 billion by 2034.

McKinsey projects that embedded finance could account for 20-25% of retail and SMB lending revenues by 2030, up from just 5-6% in 2023.

And here's the kicker: only 45% of SMB lenders currently offer embedded credit products. Consumer lenders are at 83%. The SMB embedded lending wave is still in its early innings.

As more software platforms add financing features, the percentage of small business owners who ever need to seek external capital advice will continue to shrink.

What's Left for Brokers?

This isn't an obituary for business loan brokerage. But it is a warning that the addressable market is contracting at the top of the funnel.

Where brokers still win:

• Complex deals — Multi-lender structures, SBA loans, real estate-backed financing, and transactions requiring human judgment

• Declined applicants — Borrowers who don't qualify through embedded channels but might fit alternative lender criteria

• Larger transactions — Deals above the typical embedded lending ceiling ($50K–$250K) that require more sophisticated structuring

• Relationship-driven verticals — Industries where business owners value advisor relationships over platform convenience

• Credit repair and advisory — Helping businesses improve their profiles to access better terms

Where brokers are losing ground:

• Small-dollar working capital — Under $100K, speed and convenience beat relationship every time

• Invoice financing — Already deeply embedded in accounting and invoicing platforms

• MCA/Revenue-based financing — Increasingly offered at point-of-sale and inside POS systems/accounts.

• First-time borrowers — New business owners expect financing to be as easy as everything else in their software stack

The Strategic Implications

For business loan brokers and ISOs, the Fundbox-Wave partnership is another data point in an undeniable trend. The question isn't whether embedded lending will impact lead flow; it already has. The question is how to adapt.

Option 1: Move upmarket. Focus on transaction sizes and complexity levels that embedded platforms can't serve. Build expertise in SBA lending, equipment finance, factoring, and structured deals.

Option 2: Become the embedded layer. Some brokers are exploring partnerships with software platforms that don't yet have financing features. If you can't beat the embedded model, adopt it. But this will take a higher level of technological sophistication.

Option 3: Own the second chance. Position as the specialist for borrowers who've been declined by embedded options. This requires credit repair capabilities and strong alternative lender relationships.

Option 4: Build proprietary deal flow. Invest in direct-to-borrower marketing, content, and SEO that capture business owners before they've adopted platforms with embedded financing.

None of these paths is easy. All require investment. But the cost of inaction is watching your lead pipeline shrink by 15-20x compared to the embedded competition.

The Bottom Line

Fundbox embedding into Wave is a single partnership. But it represents a structural shift in how small businesses access capital.

Every major software platform serving SMBs—accounting, invoicing, payments, payroll, POS—is evaluating or implementing embedded financing. The walls around the traditional lending funnel are closing in.

Business loan brokers aren't obsolete. But the brokers who thrive in 2030 will look very different from those who thrived in 2025. The ones who recognize this shift and adapt their models accordingly will capture the complex, high-value transactions that embedded platforms can't touch.

The ones who don't will spend ever-increasing dollars chasing an ever-shrinking pool of borrowers who still pick up the phone.