Parlay Finance

Parlay Finance, operated by Parlay Protocol Inc., offers a SaaS-based Loan Intelligence System (LIS) for banks, credit unions and CDFIs that originate Small Business Administration (SBA) and other small business loans. Rather than replacing a lender's loan origination system (LOS), the platform sits ahead of it as an agentic intake layer: borrowers and brokers submit applications through a single guided portal, and software agents handle qualification, document collection, information verification and pre-vetting before qualified deals are passed into the lender's LOS.

Capabilities described by the company and press coverage include digital customer onboarding with real-time guidance on business health and application status, intelligent validation across data sources such as credit bureaus, financial statements, tax records and incorporation documents, and an AI-powered decision management system that accelerates eligibility assessment, pre-vetting and deal structuring and identifies best-fit loan products for each applicant. The company positions the system as capturing lenders' decision-making patterns to build reusable institutional lending intelligence, and states that credit boxes, workflows, checklists and data calls are configurable by the lender without custom code. Parlay states it is independently audited against SOC 2 Type II standards and provides role-based access control and audit-ready logging for regulated institutions.

Founding story

Co-founders Alex McLeod and Jay Long began working on the problem following the 2021 U.S. evacuation of Afghan allies. Long, a veteran who had served in Afghanistan, and McLeod, who had worked on social impact ventures focused on inclusion and upskilling, observed that Afghan women resettling in the U.S. were entrepreneurial but excluded from the financial system for lack of credit history and documentation. Investigating why small-dollar business loan qualification was so manual and opaque led them to build technology to equip lenders rather than replace them. Nearly the entire founding team are military veterans or military spouses. The co-founders went full-time in January 2023, shortly before the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, and spent time interviewing hundreds of lenders to shape the product.

Business model

B2B software sold to lending institutions as a SaaS platform that complements, rather than replaces, existing loan origination systems.

Software-as-a-service licensing to lenders; the company also describes its technology as creating interest and fee revenue for its lending partners.

Traction

The company states that more than $500 million in SBA and small business loan inquiries were processed on its platform over the trailing 12 months, and claims roughly 80% less manual work at intake and pre-vetting and up to 10x more booked loans without added headcount. Named customers and partners include First Internet Bank, which anticipates up to a 50% increase in lending process efficiency, and Pathway Lending, whose SVP states the company tripled the number of applications it can process and cut average processing time to two days.

Latest developments

In June 2025 Parlay announced a $2 million seed round led by JAM FINTOP, with JAM FINTOP investor Stephen Schroder joining the board of directors; proceeds are earmarked for product development, deeper integrations with systems of record, and expanding its network of community lenders. Shortly before the raise it announced a partnership with credit-decisioning company Stratyfy, and it has since announced a partnership under which First Internet Bank deploys its AI-native Loan Intelligence System for SBA lending.