Best merchant cash advance providers in the UK

Best is not a property of a provider. It is a property of the match between a provider and a specific business, and in this market the match is driven by data. A funder that already processes your card payments can see twelve months of settlements, judge consistency directly and price against certainty. A funder that does not has to work from statements and price against uncertainty. Both may be excellent companies; they will give you different numbers.

So the useful question is not who is best but which funder is best positioned to price my business well, and what should I insist on regardless of who it is. The criteria below are our answer to the second half of that question.

Six things, in roughly the order we would weight them.

• Is the factor rate quoted upfront, in writing? Some funders lead with a monthly repayment figure or a headline advance and leave the total repayable to be discovered in the documentation. A provider that gives you the advance, the factor rate and the total repayable in pounds on the first conversation is treating you as a customer rather than a conversion.
• Holdback flexibility. The holdback percentage, typically 5% to 20%, determines what the money really costs you per year, and it also determines how much cash leaves your business every trading day. A funder willing to discuss the holdback, or to review it if trading changes, is offering something of real value.
• Integration with your card processing. If the split is taken at source by your existing acquirer, the arrangement is invisible and requires nothing from you. If it requires switching acquirer, price the new transaction charges alongside the advance, because they may outlast it by years.
• Speed, honestly measured. Same day decisions are common; same day funds are rarer. Ask for time from application to money in the account, not time to a decision in principle.
• Early settlement treatment. Because a factor rate fixes the cost on day one, repaying early normally saves nothing. A funder offering a genuine early settlement discount is offering something most do not. Ask for the figure at a specific month, in writing.
• Clarity on everything else. Arrangement fees, personal guarantees, minimum payment or shortfall clauses, and what happens if you stop trading. A provider that answers these directly and in writing has told you a lot about how the rest of the relationship will go.

A seventh consideration is advance size relative to your card turnover. Most funders anchor to roughly one month of card takings. A provider offering considerably more is not necessarily being generous, because a larger advance usually means a higher holdback or a higher rate, and often both.

UK merchant cash advance funding splits fairly cleanly into two groups, and knowing which one you are talking to explains most of what follows.

Payment platforms and acquirers fund their own merchants using settlement data they already hold. Because the underwriting input is data the funder generated itself, decisions can be quick, the split is taken at source automatically, and there is nothing to switch. The trade off is that the offer is limited to what that platform can see: if you process across several providers, only one slice of your revenue counts.

Independent specialists fund across acquirers, working from merchant statements rather than their own records. They typically offer larger advances, more room to negotiate the holdback, and access for businesses whose card processing is split across providers. The trade off is a slightly longer process, and in some cases a requirement to move your card processing so the split can be taken reliably.

Neither group is better in the abstract. If you process everything through one provider and need money quickly, the platform route is usually simpler and often keener. If you need a larger advance, process across several acquirers, or want to negotiate the structure, an independent specialist is more likely to accommodate you.

These providers offer advances to businesses that already process payments with them. Terms are quoted individually and change over time, so treat the descriptions below as a guide to what each one is rather than as a statement of current pricing, and confirm anything material directly with the provider.

• PayPal Working Capital advances against your PayPal sales history, with repayment taken as a share of your PayPal takings. Suits businesses where PayPal is a substantial share of revenue rather than a minor channel.
• Stripe Capital offers financing to Stripe users, underwritten on Stripe processing history and repaid from a percentage of Stripe payments. Naturally suited to online and platform businesses already running on Stripe.
• SumUp cash advance is offered to merchants using SumUp card readers, with repayment taken from card takings processed through SumUp. Aimed at smaller merchants and market traders rather than large advances.
• Dojo funding is available to businesses taking card payments through Dojo terminals, with the split taken from Dojo settlements. Common in hospitality, where Dojo has a substantial UK presence.
• Worldpay business cash advance is offered to Worldpay merchants and, as one of the largest UK acquirers, reaches a wide range of business sizes and sectors.

The common advantage across all five is that nothing has to change: the funder already handles your payments, the split happens automatically, and the data needed to underwrite the advance already exists. The common limitation is that the advance is sized against what that provider processes.

These funders work across acquirers and platforms, underwriting from your merchant and bank statements.

• YouLend operates largely as an embedded funding provider, delivering advances through partnerships with payment providers, marketplaces and platforms as well as directly. Businesses often encounter it through a platform they already use rather than by approaching it independently.
• Liberis is one of the longest established names in UK business cash advances and works extensively through partner channels including payment providers, so its funding also reaches merchants under a partner's branding.
• Capify is a long standing UK alternative funder offering merchant cash advances alongside other business funding, which can be useful where an advance turns out not to be the right structure.
• 365 Business Finance is a UK specialist focused specifically on merchant cash advances rather than a broad product range, working with businesses across card acquirers.

Our individual reviews cover what each provider funds, how it takes repayment, what it asks for and where we think it fits. None of them carry scores, because we would have to invent them.

Collect at least three offers, and put them on one sheet in the same format. For each one you want: the advance, the factor rate, the total repayable in pounds, the holdback percentage, the funder's expected repayment window, every fee and whether it comes off the advance or goes onto the total, the early settlement position, whether a personal guarantee is required, and whether you need to change acquirer.

Then do the calculation none of the quotes will do for you. Multiply your average monthly card takings by the holdback percentage to get a likely monthly remittance. Divide the total repayable by that figure to get a term in months. Now you can convert each offer to an annualised basis and compare like with like, which is the exercise we work through on our page on merchant cash advance rates.

Expect the ordering to change once you do this. A funder quoting 1.22 with an 18% holdback is more expensive per year than one quoting 1.30 with a 9% holdback, because the second gives you the money for roughly twice as long. Comparing factor rates alone will point you at the wrong offer surprisingly often.

Three reasons, all of them practical.

First, the pricing is not public. Factor rates are set per business off card data, and no provider publishes a rate card. Any table showing provider A at 1.15 and provider B at 1.25 is describing something that does not exist as a general fact.

Second, a score implies a common measure, and there isn't one. A funder that is excellent for a 400,000 pound turnover restaurant processing everything through one terminal may be irrelevant to a market trader taking 4,000 pounds a month on a card reader. Reducing that to a number out of ten destroys the only information that matters.

Third, the incentives are poor. Rankings in this market are frequently ordered by commercial arrangement rather than merit, and the ordering is rarely disclosed. We would rather give you criteria you can apply to whatever offers you actually receive, including from funders we have never heard of.

A merchant cash advance provided to a limited company is generally an unregulated commercial agreement. Because it is a purchase of future card receivables rather than credit, it falls outside the Financial Conduct Authority's consumer credit perimeter and outside the Consumer Credit Act, so there is no requirement to quote an APR, no prescribed pre contract disclosure and no route to the Financial Ombudsman Service. Sole traders and some small partnerships can fall within that perimeter depending on the size and purpose of the agreement, in which case additional protections apply.

This matters when you are choosing a provider, because it means the quality of a funder's disclosure is a choice rather than an obligation. A provider that volunteers the total repayable, the expected term and the early settlement position in writing is going beyond what it has to do, and in a market with no mandated standard that is a meaningful signal about how it operates. If you want to check whether you are likely to qualify before you start collecting quotes, the usual eligibility requirements set out what funders generally look for.