Stripe buys embedded lender Parafin in second deal in two months

Stripe agreed to acquire Parafin, a San Francisco embedded financing company serving small businesses, marking its second acquisition in as many months. Founded in 2020, Parafin has extended $3 billion in credit to roughly 60,000 businesses in the U.S. and Canada since 2021. Stripe says SMB capital demand across its 18,000 platform partners is a revenue opportunity.

Why it matters: Payments platforms keep moving up the stack into lending, where they have better data than traditional bank underwriters.