Autobooks & Fundbox: Enabling Banks to Better Serve SMBs

For small businesses, cash-flow challenges often surface in the middle of everyday operations, while paying vendors, managing invoices, or reviewing account balances inside digital banking. Yet for many SMBs, particularly those banking with regional and community institutions, access to fast, flexible capital has historically been difficult. This challenge is especially pronounced for newer businesses and owners rebuilding after COVID, where traditional lending decisions often rely more on personal credit history than on real-time business performance.

One real estate business launched in mid-2024 clearly reflected this broader pattern. The business relied on its regional bank’s digital banking platform to manage deposits, monitor balances, and send invoices using Autobooks, which was embedded directly inside online banking. As deposits steadily grew, Autobooks became part of the business’s daily workflow, providing confidence in cash-flow visibility, but not yet solving the need for flexible capital.

Despite improving performance, capital had been out of reach for nearly five years. Traditional lending paths evaluated the owner primarily on personal credit, which had been impacted over time, rather than on current business banking activity. The need for capital still remained, to smooth tight months, cover short-term operating expenses, and move quickly on new opportunities without repeatedly navigating lengthy loan applications.

"Talking to small business owners highlighted a clear struggle that we could help them overcome. Autobooks surfaced insights about when expenses would overtake revenue and create a cash-crunch, but didn't offer an easy solution to the problem. Adding our capital product inside digital banking connected the dots. Business owners can see the cash shortfall before it happens, overcome it by drawing capital with just a few clicks, and get back to growing their business."

Chris Spiek, Chief Product Officer - Autobooks

Through the Autobooks and Fundbox partnership, capital became a natural extension of digital banking. For this real estate business, a pre-qualified capital offer surfaced seamlessly while reviewing their bank account, providing immediate flexibility, breathing room during a tight period, and confidence heading into the months ahead.

Together, Autobooks and Fundbox transformed what had once been a years-long search for financing into a simple, in-flow banking experience, meeting small businesses exactly where and when capital matters most.

Doug Fry, Director of Implementations at Autobooks, works closely with banks and their small business customers throughout onboarding, launch, and post-implementation support. Across these conversations, one challenge surfaced repeatedly: when small businesses needed capital, banks often lacked a fast, flexible solution they could confidently offer within digital banking.

Most banks still relied on traditional underwriting processes that required lengthy applications, extensive documentation, and approval timelines stretching from days to weeks. Repayment structures were often rigid and poorly suited for businesses with fluctuating or seasonal revenue. For SMBs navigating short-term cash-flow gaps, these options frequently fell short.

"We consistently saw small businesses hit cash-flow challenges while they were already inside digital banking…checking balances or managing payments, but banks didn’t have a simple, flexible way to help them at that moment."

Doug Fry, Director of Implementations - Autobooks

As an embedded platform powering invoicing, payments, and accounting inside digital banking, Autobooks was deeply woven into SMB workflows. But without access to capital at the right moment, both banks and businesses were left with a fragmented experience.

The absence of embedded capital didn’t just impact SMBs, it created challenges for banks and Autobooks as well. When businesses couldn’t access financing through their bank, engagement declined and SMBs were often forced to look elsewhere for capital solutions.

Autobooks needed a capital partner that could solve this problem holistically: delivering fast, flexible working capital through a fully embedded, low-friction experience that matched the quality and simplicity of its existing platform.

Fundbox stood out for its ability to deliver instant decisioning, flexible repayment, and a fully white-labeled experience, while allowing Autobooks and its bank partners to maintain ownership of the customer relationship.

Fundbox brought proven underwriting, real-time decisioning, servicing, and customer support. Autobooks brought deep distribution across financial institutions and a nuanced understanding of how SMBs operate inside digital banking.

"Embedded distribution only works when capital feels like a natural part of the workflow. Our partnership with Autobooks allowed us to deliver an end-to-end lending experience that’s fast, flexible, and completely invisible behind the scenes."

Anchit Singh, Chief Business Officer - Fundbox

The teams launched quickly and continued working closely post-launch, using early performance data to guide UX improvements and increase conversion and engagement over time.

For Autobooks, Autobooks Capital became a meaningful value-add for banks seeking to better serve SMB customers. For Fundbox, the partnership unlocked a scalable, high-quality embedded acquisition channel.