If you're an online merchant, there's a new startup that's in the business of making loans strictly to e-sellers just like you. Within 10 minutes of completing the online application, you could have money in your bank account!

Small business has been in a real lurch over the last few years beginning when the smaller banks that made business loans a cornerstone of what they were about started going bust. (Big banks are not now, nor have they ever been, competent enough to pick up the slack in the marketplace.)

So into that breach we have a new site called Kabbage.com, which is an online lender for online businesses. They're not interested in lending to traditional brick and mortar operations at all -- just online merchants.

With Kabbage.com, the application process is as streamlined and simple as it could be. They evaluate you based on observing what you're doing in your online business -- transaction history, user feedback ratings and even game and social-media participation.

You do the application and, if they approve you, the money is issued through PayPal in just minutes. One caveat, though: The interest rate is not very good, sitting at somewhere between 10 and 18 percent.

BusinessWeek  reports that Kabbage has the financial backing of UPS, among others. That makes smart business sense to me. UPS has seen so much growth in business by doing deliveries for online merchants. Their support of a startup like Kabbage ensures that they can give something back and help grow their customer base.