The success of our business depends on our ability to retain existing partners and attract new partners. The competition for partners is intense and highly competitive across our product set. Our primary competitors for partners include major financial institutions, such as American Express, Bread Financial, Capital One/Discover, JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, TD Bank and Wells Fargo, as well as, financial technology companies, point-of-sale lending focused companies, and potential partners’ own in-house financing capabilities. Some of our competitors are substantially larger than we are, which may give those competitors advantages, including a more diversified product and customer base, the ability to reach out to more customers and potential customers, operational efficiencies, more versatile technology platforms, broad-based local distribution capabilities and lower-cost funding. In addition, some of our competitors have been acquired, and others may in the future be acquired, by private-equity led consortia, which may expand the level of resources available to these competitors. We compete for partners on the basis of a number of factors, including financial and other terms, technological capabilities, underwriting capabilities, marketing expertise, service levels, product and service offerings (including incentive and loyalty programs), integration capabilities, brand and reputation. In addition, some of our competitors have a business model that allows for their partners to manage underwriting (e.g., new account approval), customer service and collections, and other core banking responsibilities that we retain but some partners may prefer to handle. As a result of competition, we may be unable to acquire new partners, lose existing relationships to competing companies or find it more costly to maintain our existing relationships.
In addition, new tech-enabled platforms have arisen to support our potential partners in scaling quickly. These include eCarts (e.g., Shopify and Magento), independent software vendors (e.g., ServiceTitan) and payment processors (e.g., Stripe and Adyen), as well as multi-source financing platforms, such as Versatile Credit which we acquired in October 2025. Building relationships with and integrating our offerings into these platforms is important to attract and retain certain types of new merchants (e.g., select larger, mid-size, and smaller digital and non-digital merchants or specialty merchants such as contractors). If our competitors secure and maintain advantaged positions with these platforms, we may be unable to drive growth with merchants that leverage these platforms. Further, technological advancements in ecommerce may impact our ability to maintain existing relationships and/or acquire new relationships. For example, agentic commerce, which utilizes artificial intelligence ("AI") shopping agents to act on behalf of consumers and businesses, is an emerging AI technology that has the ability to autonomously handle shopping tasks. AI shopping agents are designed to discern consumer intent and preferences, search and compare products, request financing options, compare rewards, and select what they perceive to be the optimal way for a consumer to purchase a product or service. If our competitors secure and maintain advantaged positions with these new agent-driven purchase paths, we may be unable to maintain our existing relationships or drive growth with consumers and merchants that leverage these capabilities.
If we are unable to compete effectively for partners our business and results of operations could be materially adversely affected.