Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream: How Technology Is Transforming Lending and Shaping a New Era of Small Business Opportunity

Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream describes the needs of small businesses for capital and demonstrates how technology—novel data sources, artificial intelligence, machine learning—will transform the small business lending market. This market has been plagued by frictions: it is hard for a lender to determine which small businesses are creditworthy and it is difficult for business owners to understand their own cash flow and prospects. Now the fintech innovation cycle is at an inflection point—new streams of data have the power to illuminate the opaque nature of a small business’s finances. The playing field is wide open, with technology companies like Amazon and Square, new fintech entrepreneurs, and banks—small and large—vying for a position. Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream grapples with the broad significance of small business to the economy, the historical role of credit markets, the dynamics of innovation cycles, and the policy implications for regulation.