Lenders Cooperative Boosts Commercial Lending Technology with Mastercard Open Finance Integration

Lenders Cooperative has integrated Mastercard’s open finance solutions into its unified lending platform to automate commercial underwriting and portfolio monitoring. For fintech professionals, this move signals a significant shift toward real-time, borrower-permissioned data in small business lending, effectively replacing manual document collection with direct access to approximately 95% of U.S. deposit accounts.

What was announced

Lenders Cooperative, a provider of commercial lending technology and specialized services, has embedded two specific Mastercard Open Finance solutions - Payment Risk Insights and Cash Flow Analytics - into its core platform. This integration is designed to serve financial institutions, including banks and credit unions, by providing a secure channel to access real-time financial data directly from a borrower’s account, provided the borrower grants permission.

The functionality is built specifically to address the complexities of small business credit decisioning. By utilizing these tools, lenders can verify financial information provided by applicants more quickly and with higher security than traditional manual methods. The integration covers the entire loan life cycle, from the initial application intake and underwriting to decisioning, funding, and ongoing servicing. Notably, the data provided through these Mastercard solutions is refreshable on an ongoing basis. This allows financial institutions to move beyond one-time credit assessments at the point of origination and instead maintain continuous loan monitoring throughout the life of the credit facility.

The technology behind these solutions is powered by Finicity, a Mastercard company. The tools are currently available and can be readily activated within the Lenders Cooperative unified lending platform for both existing and new clients. By accessing data that spans nearly the entire U.S. deposit account market, the platform aims to reduce the friction often associated with manual document submission and verification in commercial finance.

"We are excited to be part of enabling such a compelling use case for open finance. By integrating Mastercard Open Finance solutions into both our origination and servicing workflows, we're giving financial institutions a more efficient way to access borrower-permissioned financial information, support verification and credit decisioning workflows, and enhance the lending experience from application through servicing."

Christopher McClinton, President & Chief Revenue Officer, Lenders Cooperative.

The companies involved

Lenders Cooperative is an Arlington, Virginia-based firm that specializes in providing a unified lending platform alongside professional lending services. The company focuses on helping financial institutions manage the complete commercial lending life cycle. By combining modern software with a team of experienced lending professionals, the firm assists banks and credit unions in streamlining their internal operations and expanding capital access for small businesses across the United States.

Mastercard is a global leader in the payments and technology sector. In recent years, the company has significantly expanded its footprint in the open banking and open finance sectors, most notably through its acquisition of Finicity. This acquisition has allowed Mastercard to provide the infrastructure necessary for secure, permissioned data sharing between financial institutions and third-party service providers. Mastercard’s open finance network now reaches the vast majority of deposit accounts in the U.S. market, positioning it as a primary utility for lenders seeking to modernize their credit decisioning frameworks and move away from legacy, paper-based verification processes.

What FF News has reported before

Mastercard has maintained a high level of activity in global digital transformation and leadership changes. FF News recently reported that Mastercard Names Sidney Massunaga as Country Manager to Lead Mexico Strategy, highlighting the company's focus on regional growth. In the Middle East, the company has been active in supporting entrepreneurship; Bank Audi and Mastercard to Support 10,000 Lebanese Entrepreneurs via neo Business was a major initiative aimed at empowering small businesses. Furthermore, the company has worked to expand digital infrastructure, as seen when Mastercard and Banque du Liban Partner to Drive Digital Payment Acceptance in Lebanon. Additionally, the broader industry trend toward automated protocols was noted when Ant International Open-Sources Agentic Mobile Protocol to Power Global AI Agent Payments, reflecting a wider market move toward automated financial interactions.

What this means

This integration marks a turning point where open finance moves from a consumer-facing convenience to a fundamental requirement for commercial credit. By leveraging data from 95% of U.S. deposit accounts, Lenders Cooperative is putting immense pressure on traditional lending platforms that still rely on static PDF bank statements and manual "stare-and-compare" underwriting. The industry is clearly shifting toward a model of "continuous underwriting." When financial data is refreshable, the risk profile of a small business is no longer a snapshot in time but a live feed. This raises a critical question for the sector: how quickly will regulators and traditional credit committees adapt to a world where a loan's health is monitored in real-time rather than through quarterly reviews?