Merchant cash advance·9 min read·Updated 7 September 2026

A £100,000 merchant cash advance: when the terminal is only part of the story

By the CapExpand team

Reviewed by Alex Beardsley, Founder · UK commercial finance broker

Facts checked 7 September 2026 · first published 7 September 2026

Very few businesses take 100% of their money on a card machine. A hotel invoices corporate accounts. A restaurant group takes deposits by transfer. A wholesaler runs half its book on thirty-day terms. At £10,000 that mismatch barely matters, because the terminal alone supports the advance. At £100,000 it decides whether the deal exists, because the standard 50% to 150% band against card takings would need £67,000 to £200,000 a month going through the terminal alone.

The market has moved to meet that. YouLend's accounts for the year to 31 March 2025 describe launching a new revenue vertical that includes non-card sales in decisioning. Outfund reads bank and platform data through open banking rather than a card processor and says its offers are calculated from fourteen months of cashflow. Nucleus sizes a revenue-based loan against monthly revenue rather than card revenue. Six figures is where those distinctions start to be worth money.

What a lender needs to see at £100,000

On pure card criteria, £100,000 wants a terminal doing at least £67,000 a month, and comfortably more than that if you want a sensible sweep. 365 Finance can write it inside its £10,000 to £500,000 range but its published typical payback of five to ten months implies collections of £12,000 to £24,000 a month, which is a large share of a mid-sized hospitality business's card flow. Liberis has a product aimed specifically at this end, Investment Capital, with eligibility from £40,000 a month and terms set case by case rather than published.

The revenue-based route changes the sums. Nucleus lends up to 200% of monthly revenue on its revenue-based loan, so £100,000 needs about £50,000 a month of total revenue rather than card revenue, and repayment is a fixed weekly direct debit. Outfund asks for six months of trading and around £10,000 a month, though its published maximum is inconsistent between £500,000 in the FAQ and £300,000 on the funding page slider, so confirm which applies before assuming £100,000 is comfortably inside.

Guarantees firm up at this level. Liberis says it asks for personal guarantees from limited companies and LLPs, and takes company and consumer bureau searches that other lenders can see. YouLend publishes no guarantee wording at all. Outfund advertises no mandatory personal guarantees and no equity, but its own site also refers to choosing a security level, and its terms allow credit checks on owners and directors, so read the offer rather than the homepage.

Worked example

Worked example · Illustrative advance on published market terms

£100,000 for a 40-room hotel refurbishing bedrooms out of season

Assumptions (illustrative, not a quote)

Advance £100,000 to a hotel with eleven years of trading and audited accounts
Total revenue £250,000 a month, of which £150,000 goes through the card terminal and £100,000 arrives by invoice and transfer
Factor rate 1.16, at the established end of the 1.10 to 1.25 band
Repayment 12% of card sales only, which is what a card-based advance can actually see
Illustration only. Every figure is subject to the lender’s own underwriting and none of these lenders publishes a rate card

The arithmetic

Total repayable = £100,000 × 1.16 = £116,000, so the fee is £16,000
Monthly collection = 12% of £150,000 of card sales = £18,000
£116,000 ÷ £18,000 = 6.4 months, or about 193 trading days at £600 a day
Measured against all revenue rather than card revenue, £18,000 out of £250,000 is a 7.2% bite, so the headline 12% sweep is really 7.2% of the business
If the hotel shifted its corporate accounts onto the card terminal, card sales would rise to £250,000 and the same 12% sweep would collect £30,000 a month, clearing the advance in 3.9 months for the same £16,000 fee

The sweep percentage is quoted against card sales, not against turnover, so two businesses on identical terms can feel completely different pressure. Work out the sweep as a share of all the money coming in before you agree to it.

Who funds £100,000

Lender	Published range	At £100,000
YouLend	Up to £2,000,000; no published minimum	Its own FY25 accounts describe adding non-card sales to decisioning, which matters at this size. Partner channels cap lower: Dojo and eBay both quote up to £1,000,000.
365 Finance	£10,000 to £500,000	A fifth of its ceiling. At its published five to ten month payback, £100,000 means collections of roughly £12,000 to £24,000 a month, which is a serious share of most merchants’ card flow.
Liberis Working Capital	Up to £1,000,000 (from £500 a month of card revenue)	Well inside the ceiling. The 3% monthly minimum on a £116,000 total is up to £3,480 a month, which is the figure to model against a closed month rather than an average one.
Liberis Flex Capital	Limit up to £2,000,000 (from £5,000 a month of card revenue)	A revolving limit rather than a lump sum, which at six figures is often the better shape: draw for a refit, repay, draw again for stock, without paying a fee on money sitting unused.
Outfund	£10,000 to £500,000	Reads open banking and platform data rather than a card processor, and offers revenue share or fixed repayments over 3, 6, 9 or 12 months. Its funding page slider stops at £300,000, so confirm which maximum applies.
Nucleus revenue-based loan	£3,000 to £300,000	Up to 200% of monthly revenue means about £50,000 a month of total revenue, not card revenue. Repaid by fixed weekly direct debit over 3 to 12 months, and it can sit on top of an existing advance.
Capify	Up to £500,000 (broker channel)	Its £75,000 to £150,000 loan tier covers this size. The card-based advance exists only in its broker copy now, and it will not stack behind another lender: it pays them out, and only once that facility is more than half repaid.

Examples from the panel, not the full list, from each lender's published criteria as at 7 September 2026. Every figure is subject to the lender's own checks.

Card sales stopped being the whole picture

The original merchant cash advance was elegant precisely because it was narrow. A card processor could see every sale, so a lender sitting behind that processor had perfect information and a collection mechanism that could not be avoided. The trouble is that most businesses big enough to want £100,000 have grown a second revenue stream the terminal cannot see.

Three responses now exist on the panel. YouLend added non-card sales to its decisioning, according to its own accounts for the year to March 2025, while still collecting through the settlement account. Outfund skipped the card processor entirely and reads Stripe, Shopify, PayPal, Adyen, Xero, QuickBooks and the bank feed directly, taking repayment by daily or weekly direct debit. Nucleus prices against monthly revenue and collects a fixed weekly amount, which is not really an advance at all but competes for the same enquiry.

The difference that matters in a bad month is who bears the shortfall. A true card sweep falls automatically when trade falls. A fixed weekly direct debit does not, whatever it is sized against. Outfund lets you choose between the two shapes under one facility, which is the most honest structure on this page, and the one we would want a seasonal business to at least look at before signing a fixed schedule.

Who is actually lending you the money

At £10,000 nobody asks who owns the lender. At £100,000, with a facility that reroutes your card settlement for six months or more, it becomes a reasonable question, and the answers changed a lot in the last year.

YouLend Limited is ultimately controlled by EQT, the Swedish private equity house, through a Singapore holding company, with Banking Circle as a sister company under common control. Its group accounts to 31 March 2025 show revenue of £171.5m and a profit of £8.8m. Liberis agreed on 18 June 2026 to be acquired by Nordic Capital and combined with Qred, a Swedish small-business bank, with completion expected later in 2026. Nucleus was acquired in October 2025 by Pulse, a Mumbai fintech founded by Chirag Shah, who now holds more than 75% of the holding company.

Outfund is the one that warrants the closest look at this size. Its lending entity, MTL Financial Ltd, filed group accounts to 31 January 2025 showing turnover of £6.7m against a loss of £7.0m, average employees down from 38 to 12, and going concern dependent on parent support and an anticipated funding round. A first-gazette strike-off notice was issued on 31 March 2026 and discontinued on 18 April 2026, two days after the overdue accounts were filed. Its advertised ceiling also fell from £10m to £500,000 between July 2025 and September 2026. None of that stops it funding a good deal, and we still place business there, but a merchant handing over a data connection and a repayment mandate is entitled to know it.

The guarantee, and what happens if you stop trading

The comforting story about a cash advance is that if sales stop, repayment stops. That is true up to a point and false past it, and £100,000 is where the difference becomes expensive.

Liberis publishes the clearest boundary. There is a minimum monthly amount of up to 3% of the receivables purchased, and any shortfall may be collected by direct debit, so on a £116,000 total the floor is up to £3,480 a month whether or not the tills ring. Worldpay's Liberis FAQ adds that ceasing to trade for more than seven days without telling Liberis may bring the collections team into contact with you. Liberis also asks for personal guarantees from limited companies and LLPs, so the director is in the frame.

YouLend publishes none of this. There is no guarantee wording, no default terms and no minimum payment clause on its public pages; what its payment account terms do say is that closing the settlement account before repayment may trigger an event of default. In agreements we have seen the guarantee is given jointly and severally, but that is our desk experience rather than anything YouLend prints, and at six figures it is a clause to have a solicitor read rather than a broker summarise.

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Frequently asked questions

Yes, but not necessarily as a card-based advance. On the 50% to 150% band against card takings, £100,000 wants at least £67,000 a month on the terminal. If your card element is smaller, Nucleus sizes against total monthly revenue at up to 200%, and Outfund reads bank and platform data through open banking rather than a card processor.

Around £18,000 a month in our worked example, at a 12% sweep on £150,000 of card sales. Expressed against the hotel’s full £250,000 of monthly revenue that is 7.2%, which is the more useful number for a cash flow forecast. Ask for the sweep as a share of total turnover, not card turnover.

Often, because a fixed fee on money you have not spent yet is pure waste. Liberis Flex Capital gives a limit of up to £2 million from £5,000 a month of card revenue, so you draw what you need when you need it. It is the shape Liberis pushes hardest at merchants with repeat buying cycles. A single £100,000 advance charges you for the whole sum from day one.

Our example puts £16,000 of fee on an advance cleared in 6.4 months. A £100,000 Funding Circle loan over 24 months carries £8,668 of interest and a £6,900 completion fee on its own published calculator, so £15,568 over twice the time. Similar cash, very different duration, and the loan needs full unabbreviated accounts where the advance needs a merchant statement.

Not usually on a card-based advance, because the security is the receivable flow rather than the balance sheet. Liberis takes personal guarantees from limited companies and LLPs instead. On the loan side of the same size, Bizcap takes a charge over the assets of the borrower and guarantors on anything above £30,000 and Fleximize may require a debenture.

Liberis reports that one deal in five completed within four hours during 2025. YouLend’s published sequence is a decision inside a day and money inside two more. Outfund is slower by design, quoting three days to an offer, and the capital lands in an Outfund wallet rather than your bank account, from which invoice payments take a further two working days.

For a card-based advance, no, which is much of its appeal at six figures. For the revenue-based alternatives, partly: Outfund connects Xero or QuickBooks alongside the bank feed, and Nucleus treats open banking as a requirement. What none of them ask for is the full unabbreviated accounts a term lender wants at this size.

Nucleus says explicitly that its revenue-based loan can top up an existing merchant cash advance rather than refinancing it. Bizcap invites businesses that did not get enough from one lender to apply for further funding. Capify does the opposite and will not stack at all. Two sweeps running at once on the same card flow is the fastest way we know to run a good business out of working capital.

Sources and method

Lender ranges were checked against the sources below on 7 September 2026. Panel counts come from our September 2026 lender-platform extract, available products only.