Lithic and Mastercard Make SMB Loans Ready to Spend

Lithic and Mastercard Make SMB Loans Ready to Spend --> By PYMNTS | July 20, 2026 Share: --> | Listen to Article Listen Pause --> Highlights SMBs need loans that become usable the moment they are approved, not days later after settlement. Digital wallets and cards are evolving into working capital hubs that combine funding, payments and financial controls. Programmable processing is giving lenders greater visibility into how capital is used while reducing operational friction. --> --> --> Watch more: Live Roundtable With Mastercard’s Ginger Siegel and Lithic’s Nikil Konduru Get the Full Story Complete the form to unlock this article and enjoy unlimited free access to all PYMNTS content — no additional logins required. yes Subscribe to our daily newsletter, PYMNTS Today. By completing this form, you agree to receive marketing communications from PYMNTS and to the sharing of your information with our sponsor, if applicable, in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions . Δ Small businesses rarely have the luxury of waiting for capital to arrive on someone else’s timetable. When equipment fails, inventory runs low or a supplier offers a limited-time discount, the difference between approving a loan and making that loan immediately usable can determine whether an opportunity is captured or lost. That gap between approved capital and spend-ready capital is becoming an infrastructure concern. As cards, digital wallets and modern issuer processing become more deeply integrated into commercial lending, providers must rethink whether an approved loan should first travel through traditional settlement processes before reaching the business owner. Nikil Konduru , chief commercial officer at Lithic , told PYMNTS that the traditional model often leaves borrowers waiting precisely when speed matters most. Time is of the essence. According to Ginger Siegel , North America small and medium business lead at Mastercard , delays ripple across day-to-day operations. “The biggest challenge that small businesses face is really around cash flow uncertainty and everything that cascades from it,” Siegel said during the same interview. Lag times force owners to dip into personal reserves or credit lines. Siegel elaborated that many businesses also lose purchasing opportunities while waiting for funds to settle, whether that means restocking inventory, accepting new work or taking advantage of supplier discounts. The burden is compounded by administrative work that falls on owners who often manage finance, operations and customer service themselves. The card is becoming more than a payment vehicle, and in fact is becoming a salve against those pain points. Traditionally, lenders transferred proceeds through ACH into a checking account before the borrower could begin spending. Card-based disbursement changes that sequence by allowing approved funds to be provisioned immediately through a virtual card and into a digital wallet. Konduru said the experience becomes substantially different for borrowers. “We make it seamless to instantly issue a card and provision it to someone’s digital wallet, whether that’s Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung, you name it,” he said. The result is that the digital wallet begins to function as a delivery mechanism for working capital rather than simply a repository for payment credentials. “As an industry, we’re starting to think about cards and digital wallets not just as a way to move money, but as an on-ramp to capital,” Siegel said. She pointed to the emergence of “loan on card” products, a model that companies like Lithic enable through issuer processing infrastructure, allowing approved credit to be delivered directly through payment credentials instead of waiting for conventional account funding. “It turns access to capital into something that’s immediate and actionable,” Siegel said. “When credit can be accessed and used in real time, whether it’s through a virtual card or a wallet, it becomes working capital in motion.” Added Konduru: “The headline here really is that small businesses get the cash that they desperately need faster,” Konduru said. “The time to actually access the funds that they’ve been approved to use drops from having to wait several days to just a couple seconds.” Digital wallets also fit naturally into broader efforts to simplify financial management for smaller businesses. Rather than switching between multiple applications and funding channels, wallet-based experiences place lending, payments and spending within a single environment. Instead of losing visibility after funds leave through ACH, lenders can receive merchant category information, transaction timing, location and purchase amounts in real time. Card-based disbursement also generates interchange revenue on borrower spend, creating a new revenue stream that lenders can use to cross-subsidize APRs, widen margin or expand credit access to SMBs who might not otherwise qualify. The growing role of card