Partnerships between banks and online lenders can take different forms, but the deals often enable banks that have long relied on old-fashioned loan applications to move into the digital age. For companies that were pioneers in online small-business lending, there are a couple of key rationales for seeking to ink partnerships with banks. First, banks have ready access to small-business customers, which can be expensive for online lenders to acquire on their own. And second, the software industry benefits from economies of scale — each additional customer adds little to the software maker’s costs — which offers the potential opportunity to earn far bigger margins than are typical in the lending industry.

https://www.americanbanker.com/news/online-lenders-eager-to-team-with-banks-find-the-feeling-isnt-mutual