Get the best business cash advance terms for your UK company
A business cash advance turns a slice of your future card sales into a lump sum today. There is no interest rate and no fixed monthly payment: you agree a factor rate, the provider takes an agreed percentage of your daily card takings, and repayment finishes when the agreed total has been delivered. We compare the funders writing advances for your trade, show you the real numbers first, and come back with the best terms your card takings will support, typically the same working day.
Three steps, no charge, and no obligation to take anything we find.
Tell us your takings
Your monthly card takings, the amount you need and what it is for. Two minutes.
We compare funders
We put your figures to the funders that lend to your trade and acquirer, then check the small print.
You get terms
The factor rate, the holdback and the total delivered in writing, typically the same working day.
How an advance against future sales works
An advance against future sales is a purchase, not a loan. A provider buys an agreed slice of the card payments your business has not yet taken, pays you a lump sum for it now, and collects that slice day by day until the agreed total has been delivered.
You share your card takings
A provider looks at three to twelve months of card payments from your terminal or payment gateway. Card sales history matters far more than a credit score, which is why turnover-led businesses with bad credit are often still fundable.
You agree an amount and a factor rate
The offer sets out the advance, the factor rate and the total to be delivered. Multiply one by the other and you have the whole cost of the agreement. There is no APR, no arrangement of monthly instalments and, in most agreements, no fixed end date.
Repayment tracks your daily card sales
The provider takes a fixed holdback, often 5% to 20% of each day's card takings, as a daily remittance from your card terminal or PDQ machine. Quiet week, smaller payment. Busy week, larger payment.
The agreement ends when the total is delivered
Once the agreed total has been collected from your future card sales the agreement closes. Nothing further is owed. Most advances clear in four to eighteen months depending on how fast the card payments come in.
That structure is why the product exists at all. A business loan asks a lender to take a view on your accounts, your business credit file and your ability to meet a fixed instalment every month for several years. A merchant cash advance asks a much narrower question: are the card sales real, and are they consistent? Because that question can be answered from terminal data in minutes, the eligibility bar sits in a different place. Most providers want to see three or more months of card history and around £2,500 or more in monthly card takings, and they will lend against that even where the business credit picture is untidy.
Two numbers define the whole agreement. The factor rate fixes what you will pay in total. The holdback, sometimes called the split percentage or the repayment percentage, fixes how quickly you pay it. Neither one moves once the agreement is signed, and the daily remittance is normally taken automatically at the point of settlement, either by your card acquirer or by direct debit under a split with your payment provider. You do not have to remember a payment date, and there is no instalment to miss in a bad month, because the payment in a bad month is simply smaller.
The trade for that flexibility is transparency. Because a cash advance has no APR and no fixed term, the headline figures do not compare cleanly with anything else on the market. That is the gap this site sets out to close.
What a merchant cash advance really costs
Business cash advance pricing is quoted as a factor rate, not an interest rate. A factor rate of 1.25 on a £20,000 advance means £25,000 is delivered in total. The £5,000 difference is the entire cost of the advance, and it does not shrink if you repay quickly.
A retailer takes £30,000 a month through its card terminal and accepts a £20,000 advance at a factor rate of 1.25. The total to be delivered is £25,000, so the cost of the advance is £5,000. The holdback is set at 12% of daily card takings, which on £30,000 of monthly card sales collects roughly £3,600 a month. At that pace the agreement clears in around eight months.
Run your own figures in the merchant cash advance calculator
Now look at the same deal the way a bank would. £5,000 of cost on £20,000 borrowed is 25% of the advance. But you do not have the full £20,000 for the whole period: the balance falls every single day as card payments come in. Convert that to an annualised figure and the equivalent APR on this example lands somewhere near 55% to 60%. Shorten the repayment period and it climbs; a 1.25 factor rate cleared in four months is materially more expensive in APR terms than the same 1.25 cleared in twelve, even though the cash cost is identical either way.
That is the single most misunderstood point about the product, and it cuts both ways. Because the total is fixed, repaying early saves you nothing. A business loan rewards you for clearing the debt sooner. A cash advance does not, so a sudden surge in card sales means you pay the same money faster, which raises the effective cost of capital rather than lowering it. Anyone comparing a factor rate against an interest rate without doing that conversion is comparing two things that are not the same shape.
Watch the fees as well. Some providers quote a clean factor rate and take nothing else. Others add an admin, set-up or origination fee, typically a small percentage of the advance, deducted before the money lands. That fee does not appear in the factor rate, so a 1.22 with a 3% fee can cost more than a 1.25 without one. We ask for the total delivered figure and the net amount received, and we recommend you do the same before signing anything.
Our costs section takes each of these apart in detail: current rates and fees, what a factor rate is, how factor rates convert to APR, and worked examples at three business sizes.
Compare cash advance providers
The UK market splits into two groups, and knowing which one you are talking to changes the conversation.
The first group is the specialist funders. YouLend, Liberis, Capify and 365 Business Finance underwrite advances as their core business, work across many card acquirers, and are usually the route for larger advances or awkward trading patterns. The second group is the payment providers who fund their own merchants from data they already hold: SumUp, Worldpay, Dojo, Barclaycard, PayPal Working Capital and Stripe Capital. Those offers are quick and convenient because your takings are already on file, but they are only available to their own customers, and convenient is not the same as cheap.
Sitting alongside both are the brokers and marketplaces, including Swoop, Funding Options and ourselves, plus lenders such as iwoca, Nucleus and Momenta Finance whose short-term products often compete for the same enquiry without being cash advances at all. Comparison matters because factor rates for the same business can vary by a wide margin between providers, and because the cheapest quote is not always the one with the workable holdback.
We publish a review of each major provider covering how it prices, who it suits, what the eligibility looks like and which alternatives are worth a quote alongside it. Every factual claim is sourced from the provider's published terms or Companies House and carries the date we checked it.
Business cash advance vs business loan
These are different instruments that happen to solve overlapping problems. The comparison that matters is not which is cheaper on paper, it is which shape of repayment your takings can actually carry. Merchant cash advances flex with trade, which is their main benefit for businesses that grow in seasons rather than straight lines; traditional loans reward predictable turnover with a lower headline cost. Weigh the benefits against your own revenue pattern before you borrow.
On pure cost of capital a business loan usually wins, and if you qualify for one at a sensible rate you should take it. Where the advance earns its place is on shape and on speed. A hospitality business with a January that takes a third of what August takes will find a fixed instalment brutal in the low months and irrelevant in the high ones. A percentage of card sales self-adjusts. Equally, a business turned down on business credit but sitting on twelve consistent months of card payments has a real funding route here that a bank will not offer.
Invoice finance is the other comparison worth making, and it is the better answer for anyone whose income arrives on thirty-day terms rather than through a card terminal. A revolving credit facility beats both if you need to draw and redraw. We set all of this out in merchant cash advance vs business loan, alongside the invoice finance comparison and a full run through of the alternatives.
Flexible business funding for seasonal trade
Seasonality is the strongest single argument for this product. Repayment is a percentage, so it rises and falls with the business rather than against it.
Seasonal peaks and troughs
A seasonal business repays quickly in August and slowly in February, because the repayment percentage is applied to whatever the card terminal actually takes. Fixed loan instalments do not flex like that.
Stock and fit-out ahead of a busy period
Buying stock, refitting a room or hiring seasonal staff before the takings arrive is the classic use. The lump sum lands in days rather than weeks.
Working capital without a charge on property
Advances are unsecured business funding in the sense that no property charge is taken, though a personal guarantee is common and directors should read for it.
Speed when a fixed facility will not arrive in time
Underwriting is largely automated against card sales data. Decisions often come the same day and funding within one to three working days.
Think about a seaside cafe, a garden centre, a wedding venue or a ski hire shop. Card takings in the peak quarter can be four or five times the off-season figure. A fixed loan instalment sized against the annual average becomes unaffordable in the quiet months and trivially small in the busy ones. A 10% holdback on card sales simply collects less when less comes in. The agreement stretches, the business keeps its cash, and nothing goes into arrears because there is no instalment to miss.
The same logic makes advances popular for funding the run-up to a season. Stock, staff and refit spend all land before the takings do, and the gap between the two is exactly where working capital pressure builds. Because funding usually arrives within one to three working days, an advance can be arranged close to the point of need rather than months ahead of it.
Be honest about the other side, though. A stretched agreement is not a cheaper agreement; the total delivered is the same whether it takes six months or sixteen. And an advance taken to cover a quiet season, with no plan for how it lifts card sales, is borrowing against a peak that may not arrive. Model it properly with the repayment timeline calculator, which maps a seasonal card takings curve against the holdback so you can see when the agreement actually clears.
Is a cash advance right for your business?
We would rather tell you not to take one than watch you take a bad one. This is the test we apply to enquiries before we quote.
- You take a meaningful share of revenue through a card terminal, PDQ machine or online checkout
- Card takings are steady enough to model but too seasonal for a fixed instalment
- You need the money in days and the amount is roughly one month of card turnover
- Bank funding has been declined on business credit, but the card sales are genuinely there
- The advance funds something that lifts takings: stock, staff, a refit, a marketing push
- Most of your income arrives by bank transfer or invoice rather than card payments
- You need a long repayment period, because the effective cost of capital rises as the term shortens
- You are already running one advance and are being offered a second on top of it
- The advance would plug a structural loss rather than fund a specific, revenue-generating use
- A term loan, invoice finance or a revolving credit facility would be cheaper and you qualify for one
The clearest way to decide is to work out what the advance buys and what it costs, in the same units. If £20,000 of stock returns a gross margin of £14,000 over the eight months the advance is running, and the advance costs £5,000, the arithmetic works. If it funds a shortfall that will still be there in eight months, the arithmetic does not, and the holdback will make the next eight months harder rather than easier.
Watch stacking in particular. Taking a second advance while a first is still collecting means two holdbacks against the same card takings, and it is the single most common route from an expensive facility to an unmanageable one. Any provider willing to stack without asking hard questions about the first agreement is telling you something about how it underwrites.
If the answer is that a cash advance is not the right product, we will say so. We arrange advances, so we have an obvious interest in you taking one, and the only sensible response to that is to publish the maths and let you check it. Our methodology and editorial policy sets out how we review providers and how the site is funded.
Unregulated but not unprotected: the rules that apply
Because a merchant cash advance is the purchase of future receivables rather than credit, an advance to a limited company sits outside the Financial Conduct Authority's consumer credit perimeter. It is an unregulated commercial agreement. That means no FCA conduct rules on the agreement itself, no Financial Ombudsman Service route for the company, and no FSCS protection, which covers deposits rather than business funding in any case.
Unregulated is not the same as unprotected. Several real protections still apply. Contract law governs the agreement, and unfair or unclear terms remain challengeable. If the advance is taken by a sole trader or a smaller partnership rather than a limited company, the agreement can fall within the Consumer Credit Act 1974, which brings a very different set of obligations, so the borrowing entity genuinely matters. Where a provider or broker holds any FCA permission you can verify it yourself on the Financial Services Register, and checking the exact permission rather than the badge is worth the two minutes it takes. Companies House will tell you how long a provider has actually been trading and who stands behind it.
Several of the larger funders have also signed up to voluntary standards through industry bodies, and the better ones publish plain-language summaries showing the advance, the factor rate, the total to be delivered and the holdback on a single page before you sign. If a provider will not put those four numbers in writing in that form, treat it as the answer to your question.
Two practical points on top. First, personal guarantees are common even though no property charge is taken, so read what a director is actually signing. Second, an advance can affect your ability to switch card acquirer mid-agreement, because the collection mechanism is often tied to the settlement of your card payments. Both are worth raising before you accept an offer, not after.
Business cash advance FAQs
Is a merchant cash advance a line of credit?
No. A line of credit, or a revolving credit facility, lets you draw, repay and redraw up to a limit. A merchant cash advance is a single transaction: the provider buys an agreed amount of your future card sales at a discount, pays you a lump sum now, and collects until the agreed total has been delivered. You cannot redraw what you have repaid. If you want a facility you can dip into repeatedly, a revolving credit facility or a business credit card is the closer product.
How much can a business get with a cash advance?
Advances typically run from about £5,000 to £500,000, and the usual rule of thumb is roughly one month of card turnover. A restaurant taking £30,000 a month through its card terminal would commonly be offered £20,000 to £35,000. Providers look at the consistency of card payments as much as the total, so twelve steady months usually supports a larger advance than three strong months followed by a quiet quarter.
Are cash advances bad for a business?
They are expensive relative to bank lending and they are easy to misuse, but they are not inherently bad. A factor rate of 1.4 repaid over six months is a very high total cost of capital once you convert it to an annualised figure. Used to fund stock that sells at a margin comfortably above that cost, an advance can still make sense. Used to cover a shortfall that recurs, or stacked on top of an existing advance, it usually makes the problem worse. The test is whether the advance funds something that raises card sales by more than the cost.
How fast is business cash advance funding?
Faster than most alternatives. Because underwriting reads card sales data rather than full accounts, decisions often come within hours and funds usually arrive within one to three working days. Where the provider is your existing card acquirer, for example SumUp, Worldpay or Dojo, approval can be quicker still because the takings data is already on file.
Do you need good business credit for a cash advance?
Not usually. Card sales volume leads the decision, so businesses with thin or damaged business credit are often approved where a bank would decline. Providers still run a credit check and will look at defaults, County Court Judgments and existing advances, and a poor file will normally push the factor rate up rather than rule the application out. A cash advance with no credit check at all is not something we have seen from a legitimate UK provider.
What is the difference between a business cash advance and a merchant cash advance?
In the UK the two terms are used interchangeably and describe the same product: a lump sum repaid from a percentage of future card sales. Merchant cash advance, or MCA, is the older industry term and emphasises the merchant acquiring relationship. Business cash advance is the more consumer-facing name, used by Barclaycard and Worldpay among others. Revenue-based funding is a close cousin that collects from total revenue rather than card takings alone.
Get indicative terms on a business cash advance
Tell us your monthly card takings, how much you need and what it is for. We compare the market and come back with indicative figures, including the total delivered and the holdback in writing. There is no charge to enquire.