Turn your card sales into working capital

Typically between one and two times your average monthly card turnover, up to around £500,000 — though the actual amount offered depends on your trading history, the consistency of your card takings, and the lender's assessment. The stronger and more predictable your card revenue, the more a lender will typically advance.

This is the key advantage of a merchant cash advance over a fixed monthly loan repayment. Because repayment is a percentage of each card transaction, collections slow automatically when sales are slower. If you have a quiet week or month, your repayments reduce proportionally — there is no fixed payment to miss and no late-payment penalty in a slow period. The loan simply takes a little longer to repay.

Credit history is less central to a merchant cash advance assessment than for a traditional business loan. The primary qualification factor is the volume and consistency of your card takings — lenders want to see that the sales revenue supporting the repayments is real and reliable. A business with some credit impairment but strong, consistent card turnover can often access a merchant cash advance when a conventional loan would be declined.

For businesses with clear, evidenced card turnover, decisions can often come back within 24–48 hours and funds released within a few days. The main documentation requirement is evidence of card takings — typically three to six months of card processing statements from your terminal provider. Applications are simpler than conventional loans because the collateral is your future card revenue, not a credit assessment of the whole business.

The cost structure is different, which makes direct comparison complicated. MCAs use a factor rate (e.g. 1.2–1.4 applied to the advance) rather than an APR, and because repayment speed depends on card sales rather than a fixed schedule, the effective annualised cost varies. We will always translate the cost into total repayable and an illustrative annualised figure so you can compare properly with alternatives — a business loan may be cheaper in some circumstances, and we will say so.