Big Tech’s new take on Merchant Cash Advance

Maria opens her laptop at the kitchen table and checks yesterday’s numbers. Thirty-seven orders, up from last week. The dashboard shows her bestsellers, her traffic sources, her customer returns. Everything she needs in one place. She started this shop three years ago, hand-packing candles in this same kitchen. Now she has two part-time staff and a small warehouse. The platform grew her. It taught her which products to push, when to run promotions, how to price shipping. She doesn’t think of it as a dependency. She thinks of it as home.