Digital lending is becoming an important business even for smaller community banks. Larger banks, which have the resources to build their own technology or buy a fintech provider (KeyBank acquired Bolstr; JPMorgan Chase acquired WePay). Smaller banks, on the other hand, tend to opt for partnerships, creating an opportunity for digital loan originating and management platforms.

One such platform is P2Bi, which today inked a deal with New York-based Amalgamated Bank. For the Denver-based P2Bi, the deal marks its second bank partnership.

“Smaller banks are trying to lend to businesses in their communities, but on a technology front, they don’t have the infrastructure to manage a line of credit, monitor crediting or even provide the borrower with tools to manage their experience, that’s the idea behind P2Bi,” Krista Morgan, co-founder, and CEO of the company told Bank Innovation.

P2Bi is also unique, Morgan explained, because “we are fund part of the loans, which means the bank doesn’t have to take 100% of the risk.”

“We received $17 million in funding a few weeks ago,” Morgan explained. “We will either use this money to fund 50% of a loan or match the bank with a private investor to fund part of a particular loan. Think of it as one loan, but two lenders. The customer views the loan as a single loan.”

Founded in 2014, P2Bi provides commercial loans ranging from $500,000 to $5 million to businesses. The platform provides lenders underwriting and loan management infrastructure as well as loan monitoring software.

Last year, it inked its first bank partnership with New Resource Bank, which co-incidentally got acquired by Amalgamated Bank two months ago.

Of course, P2Bi is not alone in this market, lending platforms like Mirador work with small and community banks to provide such technology. Then there are companies like BlueVine that have the technological agility to either partner with a bank or originate their own loans to SMB customers. Then there are fintechs like Kabbage and Lending Club, who are grabbing a large portion of the SMB market share.