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01Merchant cash advance

The purchase of a portion of your future receivables, at a discount, repaid from the revenue as it arrives.

The main thing we arrange, and the only one whose full pricing is on this site. It is not a loan: it is a sale of receivables you have not earned yet, which is why it turns on what your bank account does rather than on what your credit file says.

02How it works

The mechanics.

What the instrument actually does, before anything about price.

A funder buys an agreed slice of your future receivables for a lump sum today. The amount you repay is fixed at the outset by a factor rate, so it does not grow with time the way interest does, and repaying early does not reduce it.

Repayment is collected by automatic ACH from your business bank account, weekly or daily depending on the funder and the file. The debit starts shortly after funding and continues until the agreed total has been collected.

Because the price is set by a factor rate rather than an interest rate, a merchant cash advance has no APR in the way a term loan does. What it has is a total to repay, known before you sign, which is the number worth comparing.

The full explanation

03Price

The range, published.

Most brokers will not print this. It is on the site because a price you cannot see is a price you cannot compare.

Published range

Factor 1.20–1.50, origination 2–10%, 5–18 months.

Amounts from $15,000 to $20,000,000. Where you land inside the range is set by what your statements show, not by which page you arrived from.

Where this is the right shape

  • Businesses whose revenue arrives steadily, especially by card or by frequent deposit
  • Owners who need the money in days rather than weeks
  • Files where credit is imperfect but the bank statements read well
  • Situations where there is no asset to pledge and no time to arrange security

Where it is the wrong shape

  • Long-payback investments. The repayment window is months, so an advance funding something that pays back over years takes the strain out of the rest of the business.
  • Businesses with a long cash conversion cycle, where money leaves months before it returns and a weekly debit lands in the gap.
  • Anything that could wait for cheaper money. An advance is priced for speed and for taking a view on receivables, and that costs more than a bank.

Telling you an instrument is wrong for you costs us a file. Not telling you costs you more.

05Sectors

Where this one tends to fit.

Each of these pages says why, in the context of how that industry is actually paid.

One application covers all four.

You do not have to decide which instrument you want before you start. The application asks the same questions whichever one ends up fitting, and which it is comes out of your statements rather than out of the box you ticked.