Companies that help ecommerce merchants sell, collect payments, and ship orders increasingly know enough about those businesses to finance them.

FedEx Dataworks and Stripe are the most recent examples. On Oct. 6, 2026, the companies announced a collaboration that will combine information from the FedEx network with Stripe’s financial infrastructure, including a financing product in early 2027.

FedEx said signals such as shipment activity, inventory movement, and fulfillment performance will help create a more complete picture of a business than traditional financial information alone.

The companies have not explained which FedEx signals Stripe will use, how those signals will affect financing decisions, or what control merchants will have over the data.…