Uber Eats Takes a Page From Tony Soprano’s Playbook With New Embedded Lending Scheme

Tony Soprano used to shake down restaurants in person. Uber Eats does it via push notification.

Based on Uber Eats’ latest move, they’re clearly no longer satisfied with taking your $20 to deliver a cold burrito from three minutes down the road. That was just the warm-up act. Now they want to become the silent financial partner in the same restaurants they already charge 20-30% commission. You know, for synergy.

Uber Eats announced today they are partnering with fintech firm Pipe to embed small business loans directly into the Uber Eats Manager app… the dashboard where restaurants handle orders and tweak menus. And by “loans,” I’m talking about capital offers that feel less like a banker helping your restaurant grow and more like an italian mobster walking in the door and going, “You need money? We can make that happen… but you will pay.”

Apparently, Pipe’s tech taps into six months of a restaurant’s Uber Eats transaction history (all anonymized, but still incredibly revealing) and uses that data to assess cash flow, spot revenue trends, and decide whether you’re worthy of a loan. They’re not asking for tax returns, running credit reports or any of the traditional ways to get a loan. Instead, it’s just you, your sales history, and a machine learning model that looks at your Friday night chicken parm numbers and decides if you're good for $30K. In fact, the entire thing happens right inside the Uber Eats Manager app.

(Source: CNBC)

According to Pipe CEO Luke Voiles, 98% of applications are approved, and the money hits accounts within 24 hours. And because repayment scales with revenue, you’re not stuck with a fixed monthly payment even if your sales slow down. According to Voiles, some of the businesses using Pipe’s funding have grown 12% month over month. In theory, that’s huge… especially for the immigrant-owned, underbanked restaurants that have been boxed out by traditional lenders.

That said, Uber’s not new to this game. Back in 2022, it partnered with Visa to offer $1 million in grants to restaurants struggling through COVID and other disasters. But this latest play is way different. This is Uber turning its internal data into a financial product. And now that the infrastructure is in place, they don’t need to guess who’s doing well or who’s in trouble… they can see it in real-time. Want to open a second location? Upgrade your kitchen? Cover payroll during the January slump? Don’t go to the bank. Uber’s already in your pocket. Literally.

This is Uber telling us they want to be the platform, the partner, and the lender. It's like DoorDash, Shopify Capital, and a regional bank all rolled into one… minus the lobby and free coffee.

To be clear, this isn’t predatory lending… at least not yet. Pipe’s model is based on performance, not penalties. But let’s not pretend this is a goodwill mission. Uber’s definitely not running a soup kitchen…  they’re building a vertically integrated empire. First they took delivery. Then they slurped up the data. Now they’re flipping that data into a debt business.

To a restaurant owner, this might feel like the money they’ve been waiting for… fast, easy, embedded right in the app. But take a step back. You’re still giving up 20% of your margin to Uber… and now they’re offering to loan you back your own cash with a nicer font and fewer questions.

It’s efficient. It’s ruthless. And if Tony Soprano were alive today, he wouldn’t be running collections out of the back of a pork store… he’d be sitting in a glass office at Uber HQ saying, “Offer ‘em the loan before they even know they need it… and skim 5% off the top while you’re at it.”

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Uber as mentioned in the article.