About SoFi

SoFi's mission is to help people reach financial independence by offering products that enable them to buy homes, save for retirement, and pay off student loans. The SoFi team recognized that a significant number of personal loan borrowers were using funds to consolidate debt, especially non-credit card liabilities, but the actual payoff process was clunky, error-prone, and easy to abandon.

They set out to create a better payoff experience: one that could reduce defaults, deliver more competitive rates, and improve satisfaction across their member base.

Our partnership with Method has allowed SoFi to elevate the refinance experience for consumers. SoFi can identify the outstanding loan balance, initiate payment, and then receive immediate confirmation once the transaction is processed thanks to Method's connections that cover a majority of banks across the U.S.

— Omri Ofir, Principal Product Manager

Challenge

SoFi members often used personal loans to consolidate debt, but without the infrastructure to send payments directly to creditors, the burden fell on borrowers to manage payoffs themselves. That created more risk of incomplete repayments, forcing SoFi to approve loans at higher rates.

High complexity to build Direct Pay in-house

Supporting direct payoffs at scale would have required SoFi to integrate with thousands of loan servicers individually, each with unique requirements. Many servicers still only accept paper checks, forcing SoFi to build infrastructure for printing, mailing, and tracking physical payments, plus processes to handle checks delayed in transit, lost, or misapplied by servicers.

Beyond these logistics challenges, SoFi would have needed to build secure infrastructure to collect sensitive account data and manage real-time payment tracking. The compliance requirements alone would have demanded significant engineering investment and ongoing support, as most payments take weeks to clear and months to resolve when incorrectly posted or when funds go missing.

This wasn't a one-time build, it would have meant dedicating long-term resources to payment infrastructure outside SoFi's core lending roadmap while standing up an entire payment operations team focused solely on creditor payments.

Borrowers abandon manual debt payoff flows

To pay off non-credit card debt, members had to hunt down account numbers, servicer details, and billing addresses – information that was often buried in statements or hard to locate online. Entering these details correctly was tedious and error-prone; even small mistakes could cause payment delays or failures.

As a result, many borrowers simply gave up on the process, even when they had sufficient funds to eliminate high-interest debt. The manual process also created opportunities for unauthorized account access or payment fraud.

Missing loan payment verification limited SoFi's ability to offer better rates

Without verified loan accounts and payoff quotes, SoFi couldn’t confidently offer better rates to borrowers who were actually reducing their debt burden. This limited their ability to stay competitive on pricing, especially in a market where differentiation matters.

To make non-credit card loan payoff possible at scale, SoFi needed:

• A way for members to instantly discover and link liabilities without no manual account logins or statement lookups

• Real-time loan verification to confirm account ownership and balances, reducing fraud and eliminating overpayments

• Secure collection of sensitive payoff details with direct payments to servicers

• Reliable payment infrastructure and tracking to avoid failed payoffs that drive support costs and leave borrowers accruing unexpected interest

• Visibility into payment status at every stage from pending to posted

That’s when SoFi turned to Method, a partner able to handle servicer connectivity, payment infrastructure, and compliance behind the scenes.

Solution

SoFi launched Direct Pay for personal loans by integrating Method's APIs into their loan origination flow. Direct Pay transforms the debt consolidation experience from a manual, error prone into an automated and transparent workflow.

SoFi automated direct loan pay with Method’s API

After loan approval but before disbursement, borrowers can view and select loans & cards for payoff using Method's network of 15,000+ financial institutions, right within the SoFi experience. No account numbers to remember, no billing addresses to hunt down, just point, click, and pay off debt directly from their SoFi loan proceeds. Method transforms a previously manual and error-prone process into a streamlined experience that improves efficiency across SoFi’s operations, support teams, and member experience.

Real-time payment status for borrowers and support

Method provides real-time visibility into payment status at every stage, from pending to posted with notifications via webhooks for 90%+ of the largest FIs. Both SoFi and its members can see exactly when creditors receive funds. The SoFi support team uses Method’s dashboard to surface payment status on demand, improving response times and reducing support tickets.

Method gives us the ability to surface the payment status in Methods dashboard and communicate the information to members in real-time. The whole process is enabled by Method. We can't do it without them.

— Omri Ofir, Principal Product Manager

Results

SoFi's partnership with Method delivered measurable results across adoption, risk, and member satisfaction:

$1B+ in loan payoffs, delivered with confidence

Method has processed more than $1 billion in personal loan payoffs for SoFi borrowers, ensuring fast, reliable disbursements with no overhead for SoFi.  Real-time payment tracking confirms when each transaction posts, giving SoFi full visibility and reducing operational overhead.

Learn how Direct Pay provides repayment certainty which can lower an applicant’s debt-to-income (DTI) ratio

From 5% pilot to 100% rollout, driven by 78%+ coverage

SoFi initially launched Direct Pay to just 5% of borrowers, with Method covering just over half of personal loan lenders. Within weeks, Method rapidly expanded its network to 78%+ coverage in close collaboration with SoFi. This gave SoFi the confidence to scale Direct Pay to 100% of personal loan borrowers without building payment infrastructure in-house. Method’s deep connectivity and agile partnership made expansion fast, secure, and cost-efficient.

20% increase in discount qualification

With Direct Pay powered by Method, SoFi could confidently offer better rates to more qualified borrowers, boosting competitiveness in a crowded lending market. Borrowers who paid off non-credit card debt using Direct Pay saw a 20% increase in discount qualification, giving SoFi a real edge in pricing.

10% incremental increase in credit card paydowns

Beyond personal loans, Method also drove a 10% boost in credit card debt repayment by making it easy to discover, link, and pay down liabilities directly during the SoFi loan flow.

Operational excellence without the overhead

By eliminating manual data entry, mismatches, and tracking delays, Direct Pay improved support workflows and increased borrower satisfaction. SoFi’s support team now uses Method’s dashboard to instantly verify payment status, while engineering teams avoided months of infrastructure buildout thanks to Method’s plug-and-play APIs.

This was honestly one of the best collaborations with a third-party. The Method team displayed an openness to change and grow.

— Omri Ofir, Principal Product Manager

Leading the way

For SoFi, Method didn’t just fix a broken process, it created a competitive advantage. Direct Pay now helps SoFi offer competitive rates, reduce operational drag, and turn member intent into real outcomes.