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Intuit / QuickBooks Capital

Lender or loan platform

PPP
Type
Company or group
Role
Lender or loan platform
Programs
PPP
Updated
  • Type: Public financial-software company (TurboTax, QuickBooks, Mint, later Credit Karma and Mailchimp). PPP participant through its lending subsidiary.
  • Legal entities: Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ: INTU). PPP lender of record was Intuit Financing Inc., d/b/a QuickBooks Capital, approved as a non-bank SBA lender in April 2020. Cross River Bank also made loans inside the QuickBooks flow.
  • Founded: 1983, by Scott Cook and Tom Proulx.
  • HQ: Mountain View, California.
  • CEO: Sasan Goodarzi (since 2019).
  • Role in PPP: Turned the QuickBooks installed base into a relief channel: direct lender and servicer in 2020 through Intuit Financing, referral channel only in the reopened 2021 round.

In the archive

Pandemic-role map

  • Reader shorthand: the accounting platform as relief infrastructure.
  • What Intuit did for borrowers: let eligible QuickBooks and QuickBooks Payroll customers apply inside the product, reusing payroll and bookkeeping data the borrower had already entered; calculated qualified amounts from average monthly payroll (employers) or Schedule C line 31 net profit (self-employed).
  • Where responsibility sat: loans in the QuickBooks flow could be made by Intuit Financing Inc. or by Cross River Bank; in 2021 Intuit marketed and referred to another lender and did not originate or service.

Before the pandemic (1983–early 2020)

Intuit owned the small-business record: payroll, invoices, bookkeeping, tax categories, bank connections. QuickBooks Capital already used that data to underwrite small-business credit (Intuit filings).

During the pandemic (March 2020 – mid 2021)

2020: direct lender inside the product

Intuit's fiscal 2020 Form 10-K said the company was approved as a non-bank SBA lender for PPP in April 2020, with a subsidiary acting as lender and servicer. The archived July 3, 2020 QuickBooks page told eligible customers they could apply within QuickBooks Capital, that loans could be made by Intuit Financing Inc. or Cross River Bank, and that Intuit could use information the borrower had already placed in the QuickBooks account. Self-employed applicants whose Schedule C line 31 was zero or less were told they were not eligible through that flow.

On May 7, 2020, Intuit told investors it was working with an SBA-approved bank "to fund the majority of the loans it has extended" through QuickBooks and "plans to fund only a small portion of loans directly" (Intuit press release, May 7, 2020). SBA's loan-level data name Intuit Financing Inc. as the originating lender on 18,558 loans worth $631.9 million, all approved between April and August 2020 (SBA PPP FOIA loan-level data). Intuit's figure for the whole QuickBooks channel was "just over $1.2 billion" of approved loans that, as of July 31, 2020, "Intuit and its bank partners helped make available" (Intuit fourth-quarter fiscal 2020 earnings release).

In its fiscal 2020 Form 10-K, Intuit said it had "the intent and ability to sell all of our rights, title, and interests in qualified loans after origination to third-party investors" (Intuit Form 10-K for fiscal 2020). The 10-K's cash-flow statement shows $566 million of loans originated for sale and $482 million of sales and principal payments, with $98 million still on the books at July 31 (Intuit Form 10-K for fiscal 2020). Its 10-Q for the quarter ended January 31, 2021 said: "All of the loans held for sale under this program have been sold" (Intuit Form 10-Q for the quarter ended January 31, 2021). Intuit's filings do not name the buyers. In SBA's September 2024 data, Quontic Bank is the servicing lender on 17,779 of the 18,558 loans (SBA PPP FOIA loan-level data).

What it paid Intuit

Applied to Intuit Financing's loans, SBA's 2020 lender-fee schedule comes to about $30.4 million (computed from SBA PPP FOIA loan-level data with the 2020 schedule in PPP processing-fee schedules by vintage). Intuit reported "approximately $30 million in non-recurring revenue" from PPP in its fiscal fourth quarter, roughly $16 million of it in online services revenue and $14 million in desktop services revenue (Intuit fourth-quarter fiscal 2020 earnings release). That was on fiscal 2020 revenue of $7.679 billion (Intuit Form 10-K for fiscal 2020).

2021: referral only

When SBA reopened PPP in January 2021, Intuit's fiscal 2021 Form 10-K says it marketed and referred small businesses to another lender and did not originate or service loans in that round. Cross River's archived PPP pages corroborate the split: 2020 borrowers who got loans through Intuit were routed to Intuit for support, while 2021 loans ran through other servicing arrangements. Intuit's February 1, 2021 announcement said the PPP loans offered within QuickBooks Capital were "made by Cross River Bank" (Intuit QuickBooks Capital to Help Small Businesses Access Additional PPP Loans as SBA-Approved Lender). PPP revenue continued into 2021: Intuit excluded "$10 million of nonrecurring Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) revenue" from its growth rates for the quarter ended April 30, 2021 (Intuit third-quarter fiscal 2021 earnings release).

Counting the borrowers

The company's borrower count moved. On May 21, 2020 it said about 25,000 businesses, averaging about $35,000 (Intuit third-quarter fiscal 2020 conference call remarks). On August 25 it said "approximately 37,000" as of July 31, averaging "nearly $38,000," with "over 220,000 employees" (Intuit fourth-quarter fiscal 2020 conference call remarks). In February 2021, describing 2020 with "more than $1.2 billion" and "more than 220,000 employees," it said "more than 30,000" (Intuit QuickBooks Capital to Help Small Businesses Access Additional PPP Loans as SBA-Approved Lender). In SBA's data, Intuit Financing's own 18,558 loans report 116,947 jobs. Of those loans, 16,634 were forgiven, for $575.4 million, and 802 are marked charged off (SBA PPP FOIA loan-level data).

Customers, staff and pay

On March 24, 2020, Intuit said it was putting "more than $8 million" to work through four initiatives: donations to the UN's COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund for WHO and to the CDC, a GoFundMe small-business fundraising program, and changes to two QuickBooks services (Supporting consumers, small businesses and communities as we face COVID-19 together). QuickBooks Capital borrowers in hardship could get "up to an 8-week deferral on loan payments with no interest charged," and a free version of Instant Deposit, still to launch, would "save customers up to $3 million in fees" (Supporting consumers, small businesses and communities as we face COVID-19 together). GoFundMe.org's relief fund was to pay donations out as "one-time $500 matching grants"; the announcement says GoFundMe and Intuit QuickBooks would make "a direct donation to the relief fund" and gives no amount (Intuit QuickBooks Joins GoFundMe as Co-founder of the Small Business Relief Initiative). Intuit also released free tools: Aid Assist, a PPP and disaster-loan eligibility estimator, and TurboTax Stimulus Registration, which it said helped "more than 165,000 Americans" register for "over $230 million" in stimulus money in under two weeks (New Innovations From Intuit Help Consumers and Small Businesses Access and Navigate U.S. Government Aid and Relief Programs).

Intuit said it kept paying its "front-line hourly service workers," including security, food-service and janitorial staff, during the work-from-home period (Intuit's COVID-19 (Coronavirus) response). A California WARN notice dated June 22, 2020 lists 189 permanent layoffs at Intuit in Mountain View, effective August 21 (California EDD WARN report, July 2019 to June 2020). Intuit reported about 10,600 employees at July 31 (Intuit Form 10-K for fiscal 2020). Its November 2020 proxy statement described "company-wide efforts to hold salaries flat and limit increases to promotions and market adjustments" for fiscal 2021 (Intuit proxy statement, November 25, 2020). The fiscal 2020 bonus pool for senior executives was set at 100 percent of target, below the 117.9 percent the plan's funding formula produced; the pool for all other employees was set at the formula level (Intuit proxy statement, November 25, 2020). Chief executive Sasan Goodarzi's total compensation in the proxy's Summary Compensation Table was $20,324,211 for fiscal 2020, up from $17,506,677 for fiscal 2019 (Intuit proxy statement, November 25, 2020).

After the pandemic (mid 2021 – present)

No False Claims Act resolution, no FTC order, no criminal case, and no appearance in the House Select Subcommittee's fintech-PPP report has been located. QuickBooks Capital is the second installed-base case beside Square.

Sources

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External references

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