San Francisco : PayPal, one of the world’s largest Internet payment companies, said on Thursday it would acquire Swift Financial, an online lender for small businesses in the US.

Headquartered in San Jose, Northern California, PayPal said the move is part of its efforts to support the hard work of small business owners and entrepreneurs, Xinhua reported.

Swift Financial, founded in 2006 and headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, has provided funding to over 20,000 businesses through loans and advances in the United States by combining data, technology and customer service.

Darrell Esch, vice president of PayPal, posted a message on the company’s website, saying the acquisition is expected to close later in the year.

As PayPal’s own business financing product, PayPal Working Capital has provided access to more than $3 billion in funding to more than 115,000 small businesses since its launch in 2013.

However, according to Esch, it is based exclusively on proprietary insights. And Swift Financial’s technology will allow PayPal to assess “supplemental information to more fully understand the strength of a business.”

Esch noted that the acquisition “will enable us to better serve small businesses by enhancing our underwriting capabilities to provide access to affordable business financing solutions to more businesses to help them grow and thrive.”

Founded in 1998, listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market in 2002 and turned into a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay Inc. in 2015, PayPal operates a payment system that supports online money transfers and serves as an alternative to paper transaction methods like checks and money orders.

Neither PayPal nor Swift Financial disclosed terms of the deal.

—IANS