LoanBuilder, A PayPal Service Review: Should You Apply?
A provider of short-term loans to small businesses, LoanBuilder stands out thanks to a quick and easy application process and no extra fees.
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Expert Analyst & Reviewer
- 30 comments
- Updated on:
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LoanBuilder
| Total Rating | 4.5 |
|---|---|
| Interest Rates & Fees | Good |
| Application Process | Excellent |
| Sales & Advertising Transparency | Fair |
| Customer Service | Good |
| Reviews, Complaints, & Testimonials | Good |
Pros
- Borrower qualifications are lower than banks
- Low credit score requirements
- No extra fees
- The application process is fast and easy
- Funds get disbursed quickly
Cons
- Not available to businesses in some industries
- No discounts for repaying early
- No long-term financing options available
- A blanket lien is required
Overview
LoanBuilder, a direct lending service offered by PayPal, bills itself as a quick, easy, and transparent way for businesses to borrow.
LoanBuilder offers short-term business loans, a type of interest-free loan in which borrowers repay a predetermined fixed fee along with the borrowed amount. Is a small business loan from LoanBuilder right for you? Read on for the details.
Table of Contents
Services Offered By LoanBuilder
LoanBuilder issues short-term business loans. While many other business financiers offer similar funding, LoanBuilder stands out from the pack for a few reasons: the loans are relatively inexpensive, borrowers don’t have to pay an origination fee (or any other upfront fees), and borrower requirements are low.
How Is LoanBuilder Different From PayPal Loan?
LoanBuilder and PayPal Business Loans are one and the same. In fact, you may notice that when you begin the application questionnaire, the service is called PayPal Business Loan instead of LoanBuilder. At one point there had been plans to phase out the LoanBuilder brand name, but that hasn’t happened yet.
How Is LoanBuilder Different From PayPal Working Capital?
PayPal Working Capital is another business loan service offered by LoanBuilder’s parent company. Like LoanBuilder, PayPal Working Capital provides short-term business loans.
PayPal Working Capital is a useful tool, but it’s only available to PayPal sellers. By contrast, LoanBuilder can be used by most businesses — PayPal sellers or otherwise. LoanBuilder also offers higher possible borrowing amounts, and the amount merchants can borrow is based on the business’s entire revenue (not just its PayPal sales). Check out the next section to see if you have a good chance to qualify for a LoanBuilder loan.
LoanBuilder Borrower Requirements
LoanBuilder has pretty relaxed borrower qualifications, but its list of ineligible industries is rather lengthy and includes attorneys, nonprofits, financial services, and others. Below are the minimum requirements your business must meet to have a good chance of qualifying for a LoanBuilder loan:
| Time In Business: | 9 months |
| Business Revenue: | $42,000 per year |
| Personal Credit Score: | 620 |
Your business must also be based in the United States. Additionally, you must not have any active bankruptcies.
LoanBuilder Interest Rates & Fees
Here are the current rates and fees for LoanBuilder loans:
| Borrowing Amount: | $5,000-$500,000 |
| Term Length: | 13-52 weeks |
| Borrowing Fee: | One-time fee of 2.9%-18.72% of the borrowing amount |
| Origination Fee: | None |
| Effective APR: | Learn more |
| Collateral: | UCC blanket lien |
LoanBuilder loans are available up to $500,000 for qualified borrowers. LoanBuilder rates are one-time fees ranging from 2.9% to 18.72% of the borrowing amount. While no specific collateral is required to qualify, a blanket lien is required as a condition of receiving a LoanBuilder business loan.
LoanBuilder borrowing fees are usually not too high. However, the loans have relatively short repayment terms, making for large weekly payments.
LoanBuilder expresses the cost of the loan as a Total Interest Percentage. Determining your borrowing fee is easy — simply multiply the Total Interest Percentage by the borrowing amount. For example, if you are borrowing $100,000 and you have an interest percentage of 10%, you will have a borrowing fee of $10,000. In total, you would have to repay $110,000. Note: the Total Interest Percentage is not the same thing as an interest rate or APR. Unlike interest, which accrues over the life of the loan, LoanBuilder’s borrowing fees are only calculated once and stay the same for the loan term.
Notably, LoanBuilder does not charge an origination (or similar) fee, so you won’t have anything deducted from the amount of money you receive. Aside from potential late or NSF fees, the fixed borrowing fee is the only fee you will be charged. As for LoanBuilder’s borrowing fees, they are not expensive, but they’re not the cheapest either, and could potentially be as high as 18.72% of the borrowing amount. The repayment term is pretty short, with a maximum term of 52 weeks, which means that it’s not a viable long-term financing option, and each weekly repayment will be significant.
Repayment is hands-off. Each week, LoanBuilder will deduct a fixed amount from your business bank account via an automated clearing house (ACH). It’s worth mentioning that many of LoanBuilder’s competitors withdraw payments daily, making LoanBuilder’s system a little easier than most to plan for. You can pay the loan off early without penalty if you choose, but unfortunately, there’s no monetary benefit to doing so.
LoanBuilder does not require any specific collateral, but like many online lenders, LoanBuilder does require a UCC-1 blanket lien.
Application Process
LoanBuilder has a quick and easy application process.
The first step is to fill out an online prequalification form. You can choose to sign in using your PayPal account (in which case LoanBuilder will already have some of your information) or as a guest. The application has five steps: Contact Info, Personal Info, Business Location, Business Details, and Verify Identity. In all, LoanBuilder advertises that this form only takes five to ten minutes to complete.
Here is the type of information you’ll have to provide in each step (note that the information might vary based on your type of business):
- The first step is Contact Info, in which you must supply contact information, such as your name, email address, phone number, and intended use of the loan proceeds.
- Next is Personal Info, in which you must supply your home address and personal phone numbers.
- For Business Location, you will have to submit your business address and business phone numbers.
- For Business Details, you’ll supply relevant information, such as your business entity type, trade name or DBA, state of incorporation, annual business revenue, business start date, number of full-time employees, and business industry and sub-industry.
- On the final section of the loan application, Verify Identity, you will include information such as your date of birth, SSN, what percentage of the business you own, and your federal tax ID. LoanBuilder will use this information to perform a soft pull on your credit, which will give the lender a sense of your credit history. Supplying this information will not affect your personal credit score.
What Happens After I Apply Online?
On submitting the application, LoanBuilder will let you know if you’ve been approved to continue the process or not. To determine eligibility, LoanBuilder evaluates your business’s financials and overall health as well as your personal credit history. If preapproved, you will receive estimated rates and fees, and you will be able to customize your borrowing amount and term length.
When you have settled on your terms, you will have to complete a full application. The documentation required varies based on your business’s situation, but you should expect to submit various documents, such as recent bank statements. In this stage, LoanBuilder will perform a hard check on your credit, which might have a small impact on your credit score. If approved for a loan, you must electronically sign a contract before receiving your funds.
I Got A Loan From LoanBuilder. Now What?
On approval, WebBank (the bank responsible for originating LoanBuilder loans) will deposit the funds into your bank account. If your loan is approved before 5 PM EDT on Monday through Friday, the funds will generally transfer the next business day. If you are approved later than 5 PM, or during a weekend, the transfer might take a little longer.
To repay, LoanBuilder will automatically deduct payments every week. You will be able to choose the day of the week on which payments are withdrawn.
LoanBuilder Declined My Loan. Now What?
If your loan gets declined, LoanBuilder will let you know immediately, and it will follow up via email a few days later with additional details and reasons. Applicants who didn’t qualify can try again after 30 days have passed.
Sales & Advertising Transparency
Over the past two years, LoanBuilder has sharply cut back on the amount of information it provides upfront to prospective borrowers. There’s still an FAQ that provides some general information about how Loanbuilder works, but you won’t find much information about rates and precise terms. The PayPal Business Loan page provides the same information in a slightly different format.
You can check your eligibility quickly by filling out a questionnaire, but this requires you to submit contact information.
Customer Service & Technical Support
Customer service is available by phone Monday through Saturday. Support is also reachable via email and social media. There is no live chat feature, however.
Though customers in the past have complained about the difficulty of reaching a customer support representative, LoanBuilder appears to have taken great pains to improve its customer service experience, and most recent reviews of the company’s customer experience are positive.
LoanBuilder Reviews, Complaints, & Testimonials
Negative Reviews & Complaints
As a PayPal service, it’s difficult to disambiguate PayPal’s loan services from all their other operations. Before being absorbed by PayPal, LoanBuilder was a product of Swift Capital. Swift Capital’s Better Business Bureau profile is still where a lot of complaints about LoanBuilder seem to go on the BBB site, so it’s worth looking there if you don’t want to sift through hundreds of PayPal complaints. Swift Capital isn’t accredited with the BBB, but has an A+ rating on the site with 21 complaints closed in the last 3 years. It also has a healthy presence on Trustpilot with a 4.7/5 score with 5,336 reviews. Still, there are some negative reviews out there. Here’s a rundown of the complaints against this service:
- Unforeseen Roadblocks: Some customers, either due to miscommunication or mishap, said the application and funding experience turned out to be more complicated than anticipated.
- Confusing Terms: Though sometimes due to unfamiliarity with short-term loan terminology, some customers found themselves unprepared to meet the terms.
- Short Repayment Terms: Repayment must take place in a maximum of 12 months. That’s not a long time. The weekly repayments will be much higher than they would be if you got a more extensive term length.
- Inflexible: Some complaints focused on the inflexibility of LoanBuilder’s terms when they ran into difficulty meeting the payment schedule.
- COVID-related Issues: Many of the more recent complaints involve difficulties repaying during the 2020-2021 global pandemic, as well as confusion surrounding PPP applications.
Positive Reviews & Testimonials
LoanBuilder has several testimonials on its website, a lot of positive reviews on Trustpilot, and a few positive experiences on the BBB. Customers usually like the following:
- Fast Time To Funding: Despite the costs of doing so, being able to get capital fast has its virtues.
- Helpful Customer Service: For the most part, customers appear to be satisfied with the service and support offered.
- Weekly Repayment Terms: Most MCA and short-term loan providers deduct a portion of your sales every day. For many businesses, weekly deductions are much easier to handle.
- Transparent Fees: LoanBuilder has few surprises as far as fees go, which is somewhat rare for this type of product.
Final Verdict
LoanBuilder’s loans are fast, easy, and a little more flexible than your average fintech business loan. PayPal’s move away from transparency over the last two years is puzzling, and definitely a step in the wrong direction, but the service remains among the better short-term loan offerings out there.
While some borrowers might want to look for a loan with longer repayment term lengths, LoanBuilder has a lot to offer the right type of business. In other words, if your business needs a short-term infusion of capital, or you can’t qualify for financing elsewhere, LoanBuilder is worth including in your comparisons.
PayPal LoanBuilder FAQs
Chris Motola
Expert Analyst & Reviewer at Merchant Maverick
An expert in personal and business loans and financial health, Chris Motola has been writing about small business finance and payments for over 5 years. He has been cited in various industry publications, including Forbes Advisor, GoBankingRates, and Medium. Chris is a graduate of the University of Central Florida.
View Chris Motola's professional experience on LinkedIn.
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Organization Name: DANCAN Pest Control
I don’t have time to write a book to go over all the details but long story short I got bounced around from rep to rep being told opposite things. The end result was that they kept charging me for a month for a loan that they received the funds for to pay it off. I refinanced my loan with them through another vender and I was stuck paying both venders while the two venders kept pointing fingers at the other one saying it was the other ones fault. It burnt a lot of my cash flow and cause some real strain on the company. It made it hard to make payroll and I had employees leave during it cause they were scared I wouldn’t be able to pay them.
Well I am glad that I took the time to read the comments. I will move on……..
Organization Name: Clark Cars Of Arizona
I should of read the reviews before wasting almost a week dealing with this outfit. I have borrowed hundreds of thousands of dollars thru the Pay Pal Working Capital program thru the years for my Ebay business. No issues. Simple . Easy. Pay it back. Do it again. Thought this would be the same. It is not. They want everything under the sun .They say just a few more documents needed .Send them. Then they want something else. After they asked me for the kitchen sink, I said enough is enough. It is just not worth the hassle to be given the complete run around on something as simple as a loan .Complete, total waste of time. Live and learn And never deal with LoanBuilder.
Organization Name: kaumlaidee inc
DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME with these people. I repeat DO NOT apply for loan with loanbuilder. They are a complete waste of time. i didn’t believe the reviews i have read and push forward only to see whats written about them is true, that they will gather all your personal/business info, hassle you to get them documents for months, and when they get it all, they will say your credit is the reason for the denial, eventhough, they knew going in what my score was. Still they had me submit more docs and even relentlessly pursued us with countless phone calls to submit this or that. they call loanbuilders, supposedly suppose to help people with less than perfect credit obtain credit, and they denied me, the people they advertised to help, what a complete phony! if you are reading this, do not take this comment lightly, i speak from experience, Dont apply with them. They will let you down and waste your time. Stay away!!!
DO NOT APPLY FOR PPPL with them – paypal should be ashamed the loanbuilder loan wastes your time and is obviously NOT interested in providing PPPL to small businesses.They have you provide them private personal business and tax records only to tell you that you only qualify for loans that are x% or that your credit score is not good enough.PPPL rules do NOT allow determination of loan based on credit.PPPL is a 1% loan that may be forgiven not 3-5% loan.We’ve seen several clients WASTE their time with this PAYPAL advertised PPPL lender WHEN they are obviously NOT interested in following the rules and providing PPPL based loans.At the worse possible time – PAYPAL and loanbuidler FAIL the small business community that they should be supporting. In my opinion it couldn’t be worse. I will NOT be using PAYPAL in future if I can at all avoid it and we should ALL seek accountability for their failure during this crisis.THANK GOOD I know other financial institutions that will complete this type of loan as required by PPPL.I will also have to monitor the Merchant Maverick (small business made easy) BECAUSE what I’ve seen is NOT making small businesses easy at all!Du [email protected]
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Du,
No specific credit threshold has been stipulated, however, there’s nothing in the rules that forbids lenders from checking credit and it makes sense that they would. Payment history and derogatory remarks, delinquencies, judgments, etc., will be considered. So it’s possible that if a client of yours had an unsatisfactory payment history, the lender may not be willing to offer a PPP loan, and thus offered an alternative at a higher interest rate. Approval is not guaranteed, unfortunately. We do work tirelessly to provide accurate and unbiased information to the small business community at no charge, in an effort to provide information to business owners so they can make smarter business decisions. I’m sorry you had a negative experience with Paypal – you aren’t alone! There are many options out there, and what works wonders for some, will fail miserably for others, unfortunately. If your clients are still looking for funding, we have a great resource on PPP /EIDL alternatives that may be helpful.
We’re on your side and wish you the best!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Terrible Company. my business suffered from covid-19 and i applied with paypal loanbuilder . they approved me and i signed the documents after a week the emailed me saying they don’t cover this industry. unbelievable wasted my time. beware of this company. they just want your information and then decline you. my score is 735 so its not that. go with your local bank and don’t use them.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Exodus Design
I do business with PayPal all the time. They have been my “goto” for years. However, I applied for the PPP loan through their recommendation and partnering with web bank/loanbuilder. I filled out all the info, uploaded all my documents. Waited. Was denied based on my credit score of 661. They also noted I “Did not supply information requested”. I was NOT notified or contacted to supply them with additional info.My credit records has my STUDENT LOAN which paid off in full, but had 3 late payments back in 2014 and a LEGALLY PAID IN FULL account, which I paid off in 2019, $5000 on $5500. That is why I was denied. THIS PPP supposed to be guaranteed by the government. WHY so harshly denied???? I am VERY upset at this.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: River Arc Ltd Co
I applied for the PPP through Loan Builder. I received an email from Loan Builder on Documents they needed. Drivers License, certificate of Business Certificate and payroll calculator and verification documents and copy of bank statement. I uploaded all the documents.A couple days later I go to check on status and Loan builder says I have no open loan applications.Since I have sent several emails asking about what has happened with no reply.Unbelievable and so disappointing. Small businesses are starving, unable to pay their bills and this is the treatment we get. I have wasted 2 weeks depending on LoanBuilder. Go somewhere else if you are in need of funding. I give them an F
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: 3solutions llc
Nothing but a loan process, using the wording of sba ppp application, BS..
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I suggest NOT wasting your time utilizing Loan Builder for Covid-19 PPP Paycheck Protection Program.On the same day, I applied through 2 sources (Square Capital and PayPal Loan Builder) for the Pandemic Federal Assistance Program, PPP for paycheck protection.I have been approved through Square, forwarded to the SBA which is now in the process of finalizing my request.At the same time, PayPal Loan Builder for PPP Program, sent me an e-mail that they were “unable to verify my identity” yet, further in the e-mail, provided me with my personal credit score in the e-mail as well as notified me which site they utilized to pull my business credit. A direct contradiction, because if you weren’t able to verify my identity, then what type of reckless and fraudulent process did you take to move forward with pulling credit? If you can’t verify me, then why did you pull both personal and business? And by the way, this is supposed to be a business driven program, and has nothing to do with credit personally. And, businesses that follow the rules will actually have this translated into a grant.I suspect that PayPal is adding criteria on top of the government’s qualifications, and like banks did with round 1 funding a couple weeks ago, they are personally picking who they want to distribute funds to. I’ve already notified the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Better Business Bureau (BBB), Governor Ducey, and Greg Stanton with the House of Representatives. I was also one of the leads in our small business group that managed to get a story published on CNN about the handpicking of clients by banks. I’ll be contacting the story editor again and asking him to do an update, with my new information about this.In the end, I’m glad I made the move from PayPal merchant processing to Square last year. And very glad I’m not partnering with Loa nBuilder, and would absolutely not recommend Loan Builder for the PPP program.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I need to reset my password on loanbuilder. It gives me the option for New password, then confirm new password, then a box that say “ANSWER” What goes in that box?
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Ruth,
Unfortunately, we don’t have the answer either. You’ll probably want to reach out to LoanBuilder directly to get some assistance with your password reset. Sorry we can’t help!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: City Buzz, inc
I began w a wonderful experience w my first loan. Very quick and efficient.The additional funds request is/was a complete nightmare It was like they never dealt w my business before. Asking for extreme amount of information- even w my perfect payment historyAfter 3 weeks I gave up and cancelled the application. I’ll never due this route again
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.