Prosper started with people lending to people. More than $32 billion in personal loans later, its story turns on who supplies the money - and who carries the risk.
Online lenders made borrowing faster. Orchard Platform tried to make their loans easier for institutions to buy, compare and trade. Its most revealing lesson arrived when the data business became a marketplace.
The New York fintech began with a provocative bargain: fund a young person now and share in their future income. Its retreat into ordinary loans is a compact lesson in why financial products must be understandable before they can be clever.
Cross River sits behind some of fintech's most familiar names, turning bank accounts, loans, cards and real-time payments into software building blocks. Its wager is that the most valuable bank of the internet age may be the one customers rarely see.