Figure Ceo Michael Tannenbaum On Partnering With Bed Bath & Beyond

The parent company of Bed Bath & Beyond is moving deeper into financial services through the launch of a personal finance platform that will offer home loans in partnership with Figure Technologies. The initiative, tied to the company’s pending acquisition of Tokens.com, aims to combine traditional lending with blockchain-based asset finance.

The news prompted a reaction in the housing space. Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte took to the social media platform X to comment on the announcement. “Interesting. More competition is good but only thought is to make sure everyone is following rules and regulations properly,” he wrote.

Ahead of the planned mid-2026 launch, Figure CEO Michael Tannenbaum spoke with HousingWire about his company’s role for the platform; working alongside Marcus Lemonis, executive chairman and CEO of Bed Bath & Beyond; regulatory considerations and what consumers can expect.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Sarah Wolak: Michael, can you share what the partnership is looking like between Figure and Bed Bath & Beyond?

Michael Tannenbaum: I think that one overall approach that’s worth talking about is why there is this alliance broadly, right? When you think of Bed Bath & Beyond, you don’t necessarily think mortgage or home equity. And I think that actually is a big testament to Figure and the way that we brought this concept of embedded mortgage and this broader notion of embedded finance.

I think buy now, pay later is a great example of embedded finance, where you have finance companies that are specialists in what they do, and they kind of embed themselves inside of a retailer.

What’s interesting about Figure is that we bring some of that same approach. We partner with over 250 brands and businesses, and most of that is on a private-label basis. But we are similarly at the checkout of our partners, and we’re providing this white-label, very simple, high-speed, low-cost mortgage. And that makes a lot of sense in certain retail applications.

Figure is really unique, because normally, when you think about a mortgage, it’s so difficult to do and takes so long that it would make no sense to put a mortgage anywhere in a retail flow. After all, it would totally slow down, and retailers are hyper-focused on conversion. We’re really unique because we actually could embed inside a retail organization or checkout, and it would make sense because of how fast and easy we are.

Of course, that has to be a higher-order value product, because you’re not going to take out home equity to buy a coffee, right? And you probably shouldn’t be doing buy now, pay later, either. So I think that whole background is important. When you think about, ‘I’m Bed Bath & Beyond, and Tokens.com, and I’m thinking about who I’m going to partner with,’ Figure is a very unique choice [because] it’s not like there were four other companies that are in the mortgage space that would have been options, because what we do is so differentiated. That’s kind of one framing point as you look at this transaction and what it says for the future of finance, embedded finance and also retail, frankly.

Point two is just the idea that Marcus Lemonis and his approach overall have been more blockchain forward. … He has this vision for a future where people are looking at their assets as potentially tokenizable and therefore tradable, and also as collateral for borrowing.

And so we also fit in from that standpoint, because we are a company that has been at the forefront of blockchain since we started in 2018. So not only are we an embedded mortgage that would make sense from a retail perspective, but also for someone that’s looking for a blockchain product, we’re going to be the only mortgage option.

SW: That makes sense. I think much of our audience has associated Bed Bath & Beyond with being in headlines lately for shutting down their stores. Was there any doubt in your mind when thinking about partnering with them, since that’s such a separate avenue from what they’re doing with Tokens.com?

MT: Our approach is that Marcus Lemonis — who has a history with a lot of different media properties and retail, he’s behind Good Sam, which is a big RV marketplace — has a strong reputation for being not only involved in building brands but also the blockchain piece. And so we’re philosophically aligned.

For us, it’s a little bit less about what Bed Bath & Beyond once was and more about where they’re going. And I think there’s a history of retail brands, in particular, being revitalized after bankruptcy.

And I think the thing is, sometimes there’s the management of the business and also any structural sort of headwinds that were going on with retail, and then there’s where we’re going and Marcus and what he’s bringing. Zooming out, if you look at the $35 trillion of home equity outstanding, which is the broader opportunity, is there going to be a place online where people are looking to access that home equity and use it across a portfolio of brands? They’re potentially putting it on a card and allowing themselves to spend money against their home equity, against their crypto, and that’s very much down the fairway.

And to your point, with Figure, because we’re embedded, we maintain our own approval process and our own credit guidelines. So, of course, we want to be associated with great brands, but there’s nothing about this partnership that lowers our standard or approach that we would take for any other partnership.

SW: Speaking of being embedded, can you share any information about how deeply integrated Figure’s tech will be within the Tokens.com platform? Is it going to be a white-label offering or something different?

MT: It’s a little early to say too much. But I think one thing that Marcus has been clear on — and this is really his vision, and we’re one of the people that’s participating in this vision, right? — is the role that Figure often takes with our partnerships in the mortgage space: We partner with a number of brands and they decide how our product is going to be presented to the customer.

So, here, I do know that [Marcus] is a fan of our stablecoin yields and wants to make sure that it has some branding as part of the partnership. So I think that roughly gives you a sense of how this might be. I do think the Figure brand will be relevant in the experience, but it will be centered around Bed Bath & Beyond and Tokens.com

SW: Do you know yet which lending products will be available at launch in terms of Figure’s involvement, and will Figure be originating them directly or under a different name?

MT: I can’t say that today without kind of pre-revealing some of the information about the launch, but I will say that our really fast and efficient process is flexible across multiple use cases.

I think Bed Bath & Beyond and Tokens.com are examples where we meet people where they are. I think it is interesting to juxtapose that with our partnerships with more traditional mortgage companies as well. For example, with our products like DSCR (debt-service-coverage ratio loans), we have this integration with our partners, and they’re able to access home equity, but they’re also now getting DSCR. So, again, it’s all about meeting the customer where they are.

This will also be true with Bed Bath & Beyond. For them, I think one of the things they’re going to be more focused on than DSCR — although there is some focus — is going to probably be on crypto-backed loans, because they think a lot of the customers that have crypto might want to borrow against that.

But DSCR, those are loans largely for investor properties. And a lot of people actually use home equity to buy investor properties, and a lot of people probably are going to a place like Bed Bath & Beyond as they improve those investor properties. So, going back to this concept of embedded finance and embedded mortgage, you get all of these things from Figure.