Lender alternatives·12 min read·Updated 7 September 2026

365 Finance alternatives: six lenders for the businesses its £10,000 floor and card-only model leave out

By the CapExpand team

Reviewed by Alex Beardsley, Founder · UK commercial finance broker

Facts checked 7 September 2026 · first published 7 September 2026

Read against 365finance.co.uk, each alternative’s own product pages, Companies House and Trustpilot. Where a lender does not publish a figure we say so.

365 Finance is a tidy lender for the business it was built for: six months of trading, at least £10,000 a month through the card terminal, and a need for somewhere between £10,000 and £500,000 that you would rather repay as a slice of takings than as a fixed instalment. It publishes its repayment band (typically 5% to 15% of card sales), says most advances are cleared within 5 to 10 months, approves over 90% of applications by its own count, and holds a 4.9 Trustpilot score from 1,135 reviews as at 7 September 2026. We place a lot of hospitality there and expect to keep doing so.

Every criterion that makes it clean also makes it narrow. Under £10,000 a month on cards and the answer is no. Want £6,000 rather than £10,000, no. Half your revenue arriving by bank transfer, and the advance is sized on the card half alone. The request for 12 months of card statements on its unsecured page is the longest we see among the big card-advance names. This page is for the readers who hit one of those walls: what each of six alternatives substitutes for, and what it does not.

We arrange with five of the six. The exception is Liberis, which only reaches you through your card platform; it is here because it is often the second offer already on the table before anyone rings us.

Why people look past 365 Finance

Two tenners decide most of it. 365's FAQ asks for six months of trading and average credit and debit card sales of at least £10,000 a month, and its cash advance page says you can raise between £10,000 and £500,000. A café clearing £7,000 a month on the terminal, or a shop nine weeks after its first card sale, is declined before an underwriter looks at anything. That is not a criticism. The whole model is built on card data, and £10,000 a month is where 365 has decided that data is thick enough to price.

The second wall is that there is only one product. 365's “unsecured business loans” page describes the same card-split advance under a different heading (qualification: six months of trading and £10,000 a month of card turnover; repayment typically 6 to 10 months). There is no term loan behind it. A plumbing firm paid mostly by bank transfer, a wholesaler, or a B2B agency will be sized on whatever fraction of revenue goes through the card machine, and for many of them that fraction is small. Collections run through an electronic-money account provided by Modulr, which is the mechanism that lets the repayment follow the card takings.

Then the paperwork. The unsecured page says 365 applies a soft credit check and asks for 12 months of your latest card statements. If you switched acquirer eight months ago, that is statements from two providers. Liberis's Opayo channel wants four months of card history; YouLend reads the data straight out of the platform it is embedded in. Twelve months is not unreasonable for a lender that prices on the trend, but it is a heavier ask than the alternatives make.

Last, the pace of repayment. A 5-to-10-month payoff at 5% to 15% of card sales is a heavier daily sweep than a 12-month YouLend advance or a 24-month Fleximize loan on the same money. 365 charges one all-inclusive cost and says there are no additional charges if the advance takes longer to repay, which is genuinely borrower-friendly. The 16% cap you may have read on other pages, including older versions of ours, is not published anywhere on 365finance.co.uk; treat it as desk knowledge, not a term. Our position: 365's openness about the band is rare in this market and we like it, but the daily sweep is the thing to model before you sign.

The alternatives at a glance

Lender	Product	Range	Min trading	Min turnover	Repayment
YouLend	Embedded merchant cash advance	Up to £2,000,000 (no minimum published)	Not published	Not published	Percentage of sales, single fixed fee; partner pages quote 12 months maximum
LiberisNot on our panel	Card-platform advance (Worldpay, Elavon, Dojo Flex Funds, Barclaycard, Opayo)	£1,000 to £1,000,000 direct; £2,500 to £300,000 via Opayo	4 months of card transactions (Opayo channel)	£2,500 a month on cards (Opayo and Elavon channels)	Percentage of card takings; 3% monthly minimum
Capify	Fixed-repayment business loan, 3 to 24 months	£10,000 to £3,000,000	12 months	£10,000 a month (all revenue, not card sales)	Fixed daily or weekly, factor rate
iwoca	Flexi-Loan credit facility	£1,000 to £1,000,000	None published (start-ups capped at £10,000)	None published; limit about one month’s revenue	Monthly instalments, 1 day to 5 years; interest per 30 days on the drawn balance
Fleximize	Flexiloan and Flexiloan Lite term loans	£10,000 to £1,000,000 (£500,000 unsecured)	6 months (Lite), 12 months (Flexiloan)	£5,000 a month	Monthly, 3 to 60 months; from 0.9% a month (Flexiloan), 1.9% (Lite)
Cubefunder	Short-term fixed-cost loan	£5,000 to £100,000	3 months	£4,000 a month	Daily on working days (or weekly), 3 to 12 months

Published criteria as at 7 September 2026; every figure is subject to the lender's own checks. Inclusion is a fact about the market, not an endorsement.

YouLend

YouLend is the substitute for the £10,000 floor and for the 12-months-of-statements request. It publishes no minimum advance, and in the deals we arrange it writes tickets well under £10,000 for businesses only a few months in. It lives inside the platforms you already use: Dojo's core business funding (Dojo says YouLend carries out a soft search), Amazon (a cash advance plus a pre-approved Flexible Financing Line drawn in small amounts), eBay Seller Capital, Just Eat, Lopay, Teya from January 2026 and Worldline from the same month. The data comes from the platform, so nobody is emailing PDFs. Dojo's page puts average funding at 0.8 to 1 times monthly card turnover, typical repayment at nine months and the maximum at a year.

By its own count YouLend approves nine in ten applicants and 85% of customers renew. Trustpilot shows 4.8 from 12,426 reviews (7 September 2026). It is also a much larger business than 365: FY2025 accounts filed in December 2025 show revenue of £171.5m and profit of £8.8m, with EQT as the ultimate owner.

What it does not substitute is the published band. YouLend prints no repayment percentage and no rate card anywhere on youlend.com; you learn the split when the offer arrives. Its settlement account is a condition of financing, which means your processor payouts route through a YouLend account until the advance clears. If the reason you are leaving 365 is that you wanted to know the terms before applying, YouLend will not give you that on a public page. One small shift worth knowing: the FY2025 accounts mention a new revenue vertical that includes non-card sales in decisioning, so bank-transfer revenue is starting to count for something.

Read our YouLend review

Liberis

If you take cards through Worldpay (Worldpay Business Finance), Elavon, Barclaycard or Opayo, or you are on Dojo and have been shown Flex Funds (launched 26 February 2026), the Liberis offer is already sitting in your portal. Its thresholds are a fraction of 365's. The Opayo channel asks for over four months of card transactions and more than £2,500 a month; Elavon asks for at least ten card transactions totalling £2,500 a month on average. Starter Capital goes up to £50,000 with no transaction history at all. Liberis says 70% of merchants were funded within one working day of approval in 2025, and its Trustpilot profile shows 4.7 from 1,695 reviews.

What it does not substitute is 365's promise that a slow month costs nothing extra. Liberis agreements carry a minimum monthly amount of up to 3% of the total owed (the Opayo terms say 3% without the “up to”), and the explore-funding footnote adds that any shortfall may be collected by direct debit. Its application runs company and consumer credit bureau searches that leave a record visible to other finance providers, where 365 does a soft search. And the company itself is changing hands: on 18 June 2026 Nordic Capital agreed to acquire Liberis and combine it with Qred, with completion expected later in 2026. Product terms may move once that closes.

Liberis is not on our panel and we do not arrange it. It is on this page because it is usually the number already in front of you, and the useful thing we can do is put a 365 or YouLend quote next to it.

Read our Liberis review

Capify

Capify keeps the same two numbers (a £10,000 minimum loan, £10,000 a month) but applies the second one to total turnover rather than card sales. That single change moves a trades business or a B2B firm from no to maybe. The product is a loan with fixed daily or weekly repayments over 3 to 24 months, priced on a factor rate that Capify does not publish. Two things suit a business with marks on its file: Capify runs a Bad Credit Business Loans page, and its FAQ says the credit check is pulled only at submission, after you have accepted terms. It will refinance a competitor's loan once you have repaid more than 50% of it, and pays that lender out rather than stacking on top. Trustpilot: 4.7 from 725 reviews.

What it does not substitute is the cash advance. Capify's direct site no longer lists one (the old merchant-loans address returns a 410 and the cash advance URLs redirect to its invoice product), though its brokers page still describes a merchant cash advance up to £500,000, and 365 hosts a Capify-branded quote page that suggests card enquiries now flow from one to the other. Fixed daily repayments do not dip in a quiet week, which is exactly what 365 is built to avoid. The personal guarantee is standard, usually from the majority shareholder. And Capify prices through a broker buy-rate scheme, so the price you are quoted depends partly on who quoted it.

Read our Capify review

iwoca

iwoca is where we would usually place a business that wanted £4,000, or wanted a limit it could draw on in pieces rather than a lump it had to take all at once. The Flexi-Loan runs from £1,000 to £1,000,000 for anything from one day to five years, interest is charged per 30 days on what is drawn (from 1.5%, with the FAQ giving a range of 1.5% to 5.7% a month; the representative example is 3.33% per 30 days, 49% APR), and repaying early costs nothing. iwoca says more than 20% of its customers repay ahead of schedule in their first six months. Decisions come inside 24 hours in almost all cases and the money can land within hours. The limit is sized on total revenue (typically around one month's revenue, or up to 20% of turnover), so card mix is irrelevant.

It does not substitute the sales-linked repayment. Instalments are fixed and monthly whatever your takings did. The rate is variable, though iwoca says it cannot change it without your consent. Terms over 12 months carry a fee (typically 5% for 13 to 24 months, 6% beyond). The product pages say limited company or LLP; sole traders are not listed. A personal guarantee from at least one director is required, and a brand-new company is capped at a £10,000 limit. Trustpilot: 4.7 from over 11,000 reviews.

Read our iwoca review

Fleximize

Fleximize halves the turnover bar (£5,000 a month, on all revenue) and stretches the term. Flexiloan Lite runs 3 to 12 months at 1.9% to 3.9% a month for businesses trading six months or more; the full Flexiloan runs 12 to 60 months at 0.9% to 2.9% a month after 12 months of trading. Loans are sized at up to four months of revenue. The Penalty-Free Promise recalculates interest if you settle early, and Fleximize says customers who do so save an average of 44% of their total interest. Top-ups and repayment holidays open after three repayments. It lent £149m in 2025, can put funds in your account the same day as approval once documents are signed, and won Best Service from a Business Loan Provider at the 2026 Business Moneyfacts Awards.

What it does not substitute is the £10,000 floor (the product page says £10,000; the calculator page says £5,000, and we go with the product page) or the sales-linked sweep. Two criteria decide more applications than the rate table: non-homeowners are only supported after 36 months of trading and then up to £20,000, and a personal guarantee is required from at least one director or shareholder, with a debenture possible. Sole traders can apply only for loans over £25,000. The representative example is worth reading: 41.1% APR on £15,000 over 18 months, £1,082.20 a month, £19,479.60 repaid.

Read our Fleximize review

Cubefunder

For a sub-£10,000 need Cubefunder is the plainest substitute on the page. Limited companies in England or Wales with three months of trading and £4,000 a month of revenue can borrow £5,000 to £100,000 over 3 to 12 months. Pricing is a fixed cost of credit rather than an APR; the FAQ explains that the total cost is divided by the number of working days in the term and that amount is collected each working day by direct debit (weekly schedules exist too). Funds arrive within 48 hours, a call comes back within 30 minutes of applying, and adverse credit does not disqualify you. Cubefunder will also act as a secondary source of finance behind an existing facility. It passed £110m lent in July 2026 and quotes 3,500-plus businesses funded.

It does not substitute the geography (Scotland and Northern Ireland are out for the limited-company product) or the flexible sweep, since the daily amount is fixed regardless of takings. Accountants, financial services firms and debt collection agencies are excluded. The waiver of late-payment charges applies only where the overrun is pre-agreed. Early settlement carries no fee, but nothing on the site says the fixed cost falls if you do. A personal guarantee is required from each controlling director. We do not quote a Trustpilot figure because the site widget and public snippets disagree with each other.

Read our Cubefunder review

When 365 Finance is still the right call

Hospitality, first. 365's own April 2026 release reported 43% more restaurants and 39% more pubs and bars funded in the first quarter of 2026 than a year earlier, and that matches what we see: a busy kitchen with £30,000 a month on cards is the archetype. Late-night licensed venues in particular tend to land at 365 in the deals we arrange, because YouLend's exclusion list turns many of them away unless they are food-led.

Second, anyone who wants a named handler on the phone rather than a portal. In our experience 365 runs phone-first, and the published terms back the relationship up: a repayment band of typically 5% to 15% that you can read before you apply, no fixed term and no additional charges if the advance runs long, no application, admin or late fees, a soft search, and funding in as little as 24 hours. The awards are real ones (Lending Awards 2025 Best Fintech Lender, Credit Awards 2025 SME Lender of the Year, a King's Award for Enterprise in 2024 for its Rev&U underwriting platform) and the £150m Pollen Street facility signed in February 2025 means the money to fund you is there.

If you clear £10,000 a month on cards, want £10,000 or more, and would rather your repayment fell in a quiet week than stayed fixed, 365 is the lender the other six on this page are being measured against.

Check the whole panel in one go

Tell us your numbers once and we say which of these lenders your business fits, and which would decline, before anything is submitted. We arrange; the lender decides.

Start an enquiry 0333 041 3127

Frequently asked questions

Six months of trading and average card sales of at least £10,000 a month, for an advance between £10,000 and £500,000. 365 applies a soft credit check and, on its unsecured page, asks for 12 months of your latest card statements. Its quote form also asks whether you are a homeowner.

iwoca from £1,000 and Cubefunder from £5,000 are the lowest published floors on this page. YouLend publishes no minimum and writes small tickets through the platforms it sits in. Liberis runs from £1,000 direct and £2,500 through Opayo. Capify, Fleximize and 365 all start at £10,000.

Yes, through Liberis or YouLend rather than 365. Liberis’s Opayo channel asks for more than £2,500 a month and four months of card history; Elavon asks for ten transactions totalling £2,500 a month. YouLend publishes no card minimum at all. Both are card-platform products, so the route in is your acquirer or marketplace.

No. 365 publishes a band of typically 5% to 15% of card sales; YouLend publishes no percentage and no rate card. Dojo’s YouLend page says funding averages 0.8 to 1 times monthly card turnover with a typical nine-month repayment and a 12-month maximum, and a settlement account through which your payouts flow is a condition of the financing.

A minimum monthly repayment of up to 3% of the total amount owed, regardless of what your card takings did that month; the Opayo terms state 3% flat. Liberis’s own footnote says any shortfall may be collected by direct debit. On £60,000 owed that is a £1,800 floor. 365 publishes no equivalent clause and says a slow repayment carries no extra charge.

Not on its direct site as at 7 September 2026: the merchant-loans page returns a 410 and the cash advance addresses redirect to Capify’s invoice product. Its brokers page still describes a cash advance up to £500,000, and 365 Finance hosts a Capify-branded quote page, which suggests card-based enquiries are passed to 365. Capify’s live product is a fixed-repayment loan of £10,000 to £3,000,000 over 3 to 24 months.

Fleximize does: non-homeowners are supported only after 36 months of trading and then up to £20,000. 365’s quote form asks whether you own your home but publishes no rule. iwoca, Capify, Cubefunder, YouLend and Liberis publish no homeowner criterion, though all of them ask for a personal guarantee in some form.

Typically within 5 to 10 months according to its cash advance page (the unsecured page says 6 to 10). There is no fixed term; the advance ends when the agreed percentage of card sales has repaid the total, and 365 says there are no additional charges if that takes longer. Fleximize, by contrast, runs to 60 months and iwoca to five years.

365 says it uses a soft search, and Dojo says the same of YouLend. Liberis is the exception: its Opayo FAQ says it runs company and consumer credit bureau searches that leave a record visible to other finance providers. Capify pulls its credit check only at submission, after you have accepted terms. Enquiring through us does not affect your credit score.

Cubefunder says it can act as a secondary source of finance, and Capify says the opposite: it will not stack, and will only refinance a competitor’s loan once more than half is repaid, paying that lender out. 365, YouLend and Liberis publish nothing on stacking. Two daily sweeps on one till is where we see businesses get into trouble, so we would want to see the numbers first.

Sources and method

Facts on this page were checked against the sources below on 7 September 2026. Where a lender does not publish a figure we say so rather than estimate it.