Welcome back to our Engineering the SMB Capital Stack, sponsored by our friends at Fundbox.

In this four-part series, we’re exploring small businesses, small business lending, and the forces shaping how small businesses access capital. I’m joined by Prashant Fuloria, CEO of Fundbox, as cohost.

In Episode 1, we explored why small business lending is so distinctly challenging. Now, in Episode 2, we turn to distribution: how capital actually reaches small businesses.

To tackle that question, we invited Tanay Jaeel, Head of Product at Stripe Capital, who’s spent nearly five years building and scaling Stripe’s embedded lending products.

Highlights include:

How Stripe identified capital access as both a customer pain point and a platform growth opportunity

The shift from serving merchants directly to powering embedded financing for vertical SaaS platforms

Lessons from expanding lending internationally and balancing build-vs-partner decisions

How AI is transforming contextual lending (helping SMBs understand why and when to borrow)

Tanay also explains how embedded lending works best when it’s invisible, surfacing capital in the exact moment a business owner realizes they need it. From coffee shops buying new equipment to SaaS founders bridging subscription cycles, context is everything.

If you want to understand how distribution is becoming the real differentiator in small business lending, this conversation is essential listening.

Don’t forget to subscribe to catch future episodes and insights!

This episode was brought to you by Fundbox. 

As a leading capital infrastructure provider behind the digital SMB economy, Fundbox is focused on enabling platforms to embed financial tools directly into their user experiences. Learn more here. 

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Follow Prashant:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/fuloria/

Follow Tanay:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanayjaeel/

Learn more about Fundbox here.