VIVA Finance partnered with DRB, the trade name of DR Bank, under which DRB will originate loans on VIVA’s platform. The arrangement is designed to give VIVA the banking infrastructure it needs to operate across all 50 US states, extending an employment-based lending model that the Atlanta company has been building since its founding in 2019.
Under the model, VIVA underwrites borrowers primarily on employment status and income rather than credit scores, with repayments structured around payroll cycles. The company positions this approach as an alternative to payday loans and high-interest cash advances for workers who have thin or damaged credit histories but stable employment.
The deal
DRB’s role as a sponsor bank is the key mechanism. As the originating institution, DR Bank takes on the regulated lending relationship, which allows VIVA to operate in jurisdictions where it would otherwise need its own state licences. Sponsor bank arrangements of this kind are a well-established fintech distribution model in the US, offering speed to market and geographic reach in exchange for compliance oversight by the bank partner.
DRB brings a track record in this space. Founded in 2006, it launched digital lender Laurel Road as a separate business unit in 2013 before selling it to KeyBank in 2019, a lineage that speaks to its familiarity with fintech product development and eventual institutional exits. Chief executive Jason Hardgrave said the bank was “laser-focused on supporting innovation” and pointed to the company’s 20-year history as evidence of an infrastructure capable of supporting next-generation lending products.
VIVA chief executive Jack Markwalter framed the partnership in terms of scale: “Together, we can deliver employment-based lending at scale, creating fairer, more accessible financial solutions for the hardworking customers we serve across the country.”
The release did not disclose deal terms, revenue-sharing arrangements, loan volume targets or a specific timeline for achieving all-50-state coverage.
Market context
Employment-based and income-linked lending has become a defined segment within US consumer fintech, driven by growing recognition that FICO scores are a poor proxy for creditworthiness among lower-income workers, gig workers and recent immigrants. Several players compete in or adjacent to this space, including earned-wage access providers that offer advances rather than loans, and a handful of fintech lenders that use payroll data for underwriting. The lines between earned-wage access and instalment lending are blurring as providers deepen their product sets.
The regulatory environment for sponsor bank models is worth noting. The US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have both examined the true-lender doctrine in recent years, with courts and regulators periodically scrutinising whether the fintech or the bank is the substantive lender in such arrangements. VIVA and DRB have not addressed their approach to true-lender compliance in the announcement, though DRB’s FDIC-insured status and its existing fintech programme suggest an established compliance framework.
VIVA has raised more than $20million to date and has been recognised in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 and Inc. 5000 rankings. The next milestones to watch are the pace of state rollout, any expansion of the product suite beyond personal loans, and whether the partnership generates the kind of loan volume data that would support a larger fundraising round.
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