Merchant Cash Advance Direct Lenders

The best merchant cash advance lender for your business will often be determined by the funding offered, the factor rate, the repayment percentage, their ease of application and tracking (typically the quality of the software they are using) and their customer service.

We cover seven MCA direct lenders below with the largest being YouLend and Liberis.

MCA Lender	Funding Available	Min Monthly Card Sales	Min Trading Period	Lending Cap (% of monthly card sales)
YouLend	£3K – £10M	£3K	3 months	200%
Liberis	£1K – £1M	£1K	4 months	200%
365 Finance	£1K – £400K	£10K	6 months	Not Disclosed
Capify	£5K – £500K	£20K	12 months	126%*
Momenta Finance	£30K – £150K	£30K	12 months	120%
Nucleus	£3K- £300K	Not disclosed	4 months	200%
Love Finance	£5K – £250K	£2K	3 months	Not Disclosed

*Factor rate varies but 1.26 is their typical rate

YouLend 

• Funding Available: £3,000 – £10M
• Eligible Businesses: A minimum of 3 months trading and £1.5K monthly card revenue
• Available Terms: Flexible
• Application process: Complete a simple online form here and wait a maximum of one working day for a decision
• Features:
  • Highest MCA lending capabilities in the UK
  • 4.8 rating on Trustpilot
  • 90% of business approved
  • They can offer cash advances to Shopify merchants
  • Approval with as little as 3 months of trading history

Having started in 2016 YouLend is fast becoming a leading merchant cash advance provider in the UK. Their growth has been impressive having expanded from 33 employees and a turnover of £5.7M in 2020 to a team of 323 and a turnover of £67.5M in 2023. This dominance of the UK merchant cash advance sector is set to continue after securing £4 billion in additional financing from J.P. Morgan in 2024.

They currently operate in Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, Belgium, Spain, Germany, France and the US with plans to go live in Portugal and Italy soon.

Their growth is largely driven by partnerships with payment service providers, acquirers, ISOs, clouding accounting software providers, brokers, Saas providers, marketplaces, payment platforms and e-commerce platforms via their embedded finance solution which enables applications on third-party sites. At the end of 2023, they had over 300 partnerships and surpassed 150,000 merchant cash advances. 

A standout feature of YouLend is that it offers the highest level of MCA funding per business of any merchant cash advance provider in the UK.

It provides cash advances for a range of company sizes from those with as little as three months of trading history to large established multinationals. Companies with longer trading histories will receive higher multiples of their card revenue with 200% available to businesses with 5 or more years of trading history. 

They offer the opportunity to make one-off payments to pay off the advance early. With a 24-hour approval process and an online dashboard to see the progress of your application YouLend is very user-friendly.

It is worth noting they have a partnership with Amazon and from Nov 2023 started offering UK-based Amazon sellers funding based on their Amazon sales.

You can see our more detailed overview of Youlend here.

Liberis

• Funding Available: £1,000 – £1M
• Eligible Businesses: A minimum of 4 months trading with £1,000 monthly revenue
• Available Terms: Flexible
• Application process: Complete the online application and receive funds after 48 hours
• Features:
  • 89% of customers renew at least once
  • 78% of successful applications received funds within 2 working days
  • Modular platform with many partners
  • Trustpilot score of 4.9
  • Open to start-ups with only 4 months trading history

Liberis have provided £500m in business financing to over 17,000 SMEs across Europe, the UK and the US since it launched in 2007. In 2020, they raised £70 million and in 2021 partnered with Klarna and started offering their merchants reveue based financing. They are competing with Youlend for market share and also driving growth through an embedded finance solution.

The veteran in the space is Liberis, which has provided over £500m in financing to 17,000 SMEs across Europe, the US and the UK since it launched in 2007. After raising £70m from the likes of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in 2020, Liberis teamed up with Klarna last summer to offer merchants on the buy now, pay later platform its revenue-based financing. 

They currently have over 300 partnerships and integrate with several popular payment processors (to automate the collection of card sales to repay the MCA) including Klarna, Worldpay, Clover/Fiserv, Barclaycard, Elavon, Global Payment, DNA Payments, Lloyds Cardnet and Teya.

A good range of funding is available, from £1,000 to £1 million, and the funds can take as little as 48 hours to be received. Once approved, they require a minimum monthly repayment of up to 3% of the total owed.

They are open to startups with a minimum requirement of just four months of trading history and £1,000 in monthly card sales. They have an impressive 4.9 Trustpilot score and claim 89% of their customers renew at least once.

365 Finance

• Funding Available: £10,000 – £400,000
• Eligible Businesses: 6 months minimum trading and £10,000+ in monthly card sales
• Available Terms: 5 to 10 months is typical, but this is flexible
• Application process: Complete a simple online form here and wait a maximum of 24 hours for a decision
• Features:
  • Receive funding within a few days
  • Dedicated relationship manager
  • No security required
  • Benefit from a dedicated relationship manager
  • No hidden fees and no admin fees

365 Business Finance have branded their merchant cash advances as Rev&U. They have been in business since 2012 but are smaller than YouLend with 35 employees listed on their last annual accounts.

Requirements may be higher than YouLend requiring just 6 months of trading history and at least £10,000 in monthly card sales. The funding available is a little narrow, with a high floor (£10,000) and a low ceiling (£400,000).

However, those SMEs that apply know they stand a good chance of approval, as they claim their current approval rate is around 90%. They also state their repayment percentage is typically between 5% and 15%, and their online calculator is perhaps the most informative, giving estimated figures on not just funding amounts but retrieval rates too.

Capify

• Funding Available: £5,000 – £500,000
• Eligible Businesses: A minimum of 12 months trading and £20K monthly card sales
• Available Terms: Typically 6 to 18 months, but this is flexible
• Application process: Submit an online application within 10 minutes
• Features:
  • Funding can be within 24 hours
  • 1-minute eligibility checker & 10-minute application
  • Highly rated on Trustpilot (a score of 4.6).
  • Opportunity to renew.
  • Dedicated account manager.

Established in Manchester during the 2008 financial crisis, Capify offers secured loans, unsecured small business loans and merchant cash advances.

Their merchant cash advance product requires a minimum of 12 months of trading and £20,000 in monthly card sales. Both of these criteria are on the higher end of the industry norm and will not rule them out for Startups and small sole traders.

They claim they can check eligibility in just one minute after a 10-minute application process. They offer funding from £5,000 to £500,000 in funding with an opportunity to renew.

Momenta Finance

• Funding Available: £30,000 – £150,000
• Eligible Businesses: Minimum 12 months trading history
• Available Terms: Flexible
• Application process: After applying online with the required documents. Approval can be provided in 1 hour and funding transferred within 48 hours
• Features:
  • Funding is capped at 120% of monthly card takings
  • Personal guarantees may be required
  • Their factor rate starts from 1.18
  • High minimum funding amount
  • Intimate customer service

Momenta Finance (trading name ‘Merchant Money Ltd’) is a relatively firm which offers a range of business finance including business cash advances, secured business loans,  unsecured business loans and property finance.

Available funding ranges from £30,000 and caps out at £150,000. A minimum of 12 months of trading history is required, and they stipulate that they will get back to you within 24 hours.

On the negative side, their funding is capped at 120% of monthly card takings, their factor rate starts at 1.18 (which is relatively high), and personal guarantees may be required. This makes Momenta Finance a fairly limited and potentially expensive option. It should also be noted their company accounts show they are making a loss.

Nucleus

• Funding Available: £3,000 – £300,000
• Eligible Businesses: Minimum 4 months trading history, 10 or more transactions per month, at least one company director based in the UK
• Available Terms: 3-12 months
• Application process: Approval can be done within minutes of applying online
• Features:
  • Must be backed by personal guarantees
  • Borrow up to 200% of monthly card sales
  • Extremely-fast approval times
  • 4.7 on Trustpilot

Founded in 2011, Nucleus Commercial Finance offers unsecured business loans and cash advances which they refer to as revenue-based loans. They are smaller than most of their competitors with a turnover of £2M in 2023 (£1M down on 2022).

They claim 95% of decisions are made within one minute and funding can be transferred in 24 hours.

Funding ranges from £3,000 to £300,000, which is on the lower end and four months of trading history and at least month transactions per month are required. 

Funding of 200% of monthly card sales appears generous but advances above £75,000 will require personal guarantees from a homeowner in order to their revenue funding criteria.

. This makes it difficult to compare with other MCAs because there’s a significantly higher level of risk involved for the business and a significantly lower amount of risk posed to Nucleus, which is perhaps why their speedy funding is so ‘generous’.

Love Finance

• Funding Available: £5,000 – £250,000
• Eligible Businesses: A minimum of 3 months trading history, £2,000 monthly card sales
• Available Terms: 1-12 months
• Application process: Submit documents online, ID scan using an app, and then receive funding within 4 to 24 hours
• Features:
  • 4.9 on Trustpilot
  • Rates as low as 1% per month
  • Same-day funding

Love Finance is a small, Birmingham-based finance broker and lender that offers merchant cash advances and unsecured business loans.

The funding offered ranges from £5,000 to £250,000 and they only require three months of trading and £2,000 in monthly card sales. 

Merchant Cash Advance Brokers

An MCA broker will likely refer you to one of the lenders above but not provide the lending directly. Some merchant cash advance brokers include:

• Funding Options
• Sorodo Ltd which owns Capalona and Merchant Loan Advance
• Capitalise.com