Best Merchant Cash Advance Providers and Lenders UK (2026)

By the CapExpand Team, led by Alex BeardsleyLast updated 5 September 20269 min read

Quick verdict

Five direct lenders, compared on what each publishes rather than on opinion. YouLend has the lowest entry floors of the five and prices from open banking data. 365 Finance funds the licensed and late-night venues YouLend excludes and states a named account manager. Capify writes fixed-repayment loans with published tolerance for an imperfect file. Fleximize allows overpayments without a penalty. iwoca is a revolving line rather than an advance. Which one fits is set by its criteria against your card turnover, trading time, sector and file, and we check those before a case goes anywhere. All MCAs are unregulated commercial agreements. We are brokers, not advisers, and nothing here is a recommendation.

Look, every "best MCA" list online is written by someone who has never actually submitted a deal. We have. We sit between UK business owners and the lenders, package the application, and watch who approves, who declines, and how the final offer compares with the headline terms. This page is what we have learned doing that, not a rewrite of the lenders' own marketing.

One thing to note first. A merchant cash advance is not the cheapest money your business can borrow. The factor rate (usually 1.10 to 1.40) makes it pricier than a bank loan in pure cost terms. What you are buying is speed and flexibility, and enquiring does not affect your credit score. If you have two years of clean accounts and time to wait, a term loan is cheaper. If you need £25,000 by Friday and your takings move around, an MCA earns its keep.

UK merchant cash advance lenders and companies compared

Comparison of UK merchant cash advance providers: funding range, minimum card sales, minimum trading time, speed to fund and who each suits.
Provider	Funding range	Min card sales	Min trading	Speed to fund	Published focus
YouLend	Up to £2M	£1,500 / month	3 months	Same day possible, 1 to 3 days typical	Card and e-commerce sellers inside its published criteria; open banking read
365 Finance	£10K to £500K	£10,000 / month	6 to 12 months	Reliably 24 to 48 hours	Pubs, bars, nightclubs and restaurants inside its published criteria
Capify	£10K to £3M (business loan)	£10,000 / month turnover	12 months	24 to 48 hours	Established traders with an imperfect file, fixed monthly repayments
Fleximize	£5,000 to £500,000	Not card-sales dependent	6 months	24 to 48 hours	Overpaying and settling early, top-ups
iwoca	£1K to £1M	Not card-sales dependent	6 months (Flexi-Loan)	Hours to a few days	Recurring cash flow gaps, top-ups, businesses wanting to only pay for what they use

Ranges are lender-published and change. Your offer depends on your card turnover, trading history, industry and credit profile. iwoca is a Flexi-Loan, included as the most common MCA alternative.

The providers, and who each one actually suits

1. YouLend

Lowest published floors on this list

The lowest entry floors of the five, at £1,500 a month in card sales and three months of trading, and a portal that reads open banking data, which is how it prices and decides. It publishes a ceiling of £2m and no minimum. Card machine customers and online sellers on Shopify, Amazon or eBay are inside its stated criteria; pricing is deal by deal and it publishes no rate.

The catch: Portal-first, so less hand-holding. Excludes nightclubs (unless food-led), adult, gambling and crypto.

2. 365 Finance

Licensed and late-night venues; a named account manager

Funds hospitality, late-night and licensed venues that YouLend’s criteria exclude, and states a named account manager on the phone rather than a portal alone. Its published floor is higher, £10,000 a month in card sales and six to twelve months of trading, and it caps repayments at 16% of daily card sales.

The catch: Higher minimum card sales (£10k/month) and a longer trading requirement than YouLend.

3. Capify

Fixed-repayment loans; published tolerance for adverse credit

One of the longest-running names in UK alternative lending, with published tolerance for an imperfect credit file where the trading numbers hold up. One big 2026 change to know: Capify no longer markets a card-split merchant cash advance on its site. Its flagship is a fixed-repayment small business loan, so what you get is Capify underwriting flexibility with a fixed schedule rather than repayments that track card takings.

The catch: No card-split MCA any more; pricing is rarely the cheapest. You are paying for flexibility on risk.

4. Fleximize

Penalty-free overpayments, under its own terms

Strictly a revenue-based business loan rather than a pure MCA, but it behaves similarly and it is on this list for one published feature: overpayments without a penalty, so a balance cleared early costs less interest. Top-ups are available once you are part-way through.

The catch: It is a loan with interest, not a card-sales MCA, so repayments are less flexible in a quiet month.

5. iwoca

A revolving Flexi-Loan, not an advance

Not an MCA at all, it is a Flexi-Loan, a revolving line you draw on and repay as you go with no early repayment fees. It is here because a recurring cash flow gap and a one-off lump sum are different needs, and a line of credit answers the first one. Which shape fits is yours to decide on your own figures.

The catch: A line of credit, not a lump-sum advance. Different product, repaid monthly.

How we actually decide where to send your deal

There is no algorithm. When a deal comes in we look at four things in order: your monthly card sales, how long you have been trading, your industry, and your credit profile. Those four decide who is even eligible before price comes into it.

Two illustrative examples, not client case studies, show how it plays out. A salon turning over a healthy five figures a month on card, trading over a year with a clean file, goes straight to YouLend through the open banking route and can fund within days. A late-night bar with a previous decline and a CCJ is a 365 Finance case instead. Different businesses, different homes. Sending both to the same lender would get one of them declined.

The thing nobody tells you: applying to five lenders yourself leaves five footprints and five conflicting offers, and some lenders will not touch a business that has clearly been shopped around hard. We package it once and approach the two or three whose published criteria the case clears, and enquiring does not affect your credit score.

When an advance is the wrong shape

Two years of clean accounts and time to wait. A term loan is priced on an annual rate rather than a factor rate, and the median published starting rates on the unsecured panel are on the unsecured business loans page for comparison.
A recurring gap rather than a one-off. A revolving line such as iwoca's Flexi-Loan charges only on what is drawn, which is a different shape of product from a lump-sum advance.
A rate quoted before a bank statement has been seen. No lender on this list prices an advance without card data, so a figure given without it is a guess or an anchor.
Income that is mostly cash or bank transfer. An advance is repaid from card receivables, so a low card mix produces a small offer at a high cost.

Want us to tell you who'd actually fund you?

Two-minute form, and enquiring does not affect your credit score. We look at your numbers and tell you which lenders fit and what it would cost, before you commit to anything. It is free.

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What a shortlist like this leaves out

Every shortlist of advance providers hides the same thing: the alternative on the same enquiry. Advances sit inside our unsecured panel of 55 lenders alongside the term loans and credit lines they compete with (checked September 2026). At £25,000 unsecured, 36 lenders have a product covering the amount with a median published floor of 19.2% a year; at £50,000 it is 47 lenders at 17% (checked September 2026). Comparing advances only against advances answers the wrong question.

Criteria decide who can help long before pricing does. 21 of those lenders will look at a business trading under a year, 39 do not require a homeowning director and 24 accept minor adverse credit older than 24 months (checked September 2026). Those three filters cut a list faster than any table of factor rates.

Providers come and go, and lists like this age badly. Momenta Finance ran a merchant cash advance until recently and no longer does: both its advance pages returned a 404 when we checked on 7 September 2026, and the last archived capture of the product page is dated 5 March 2026. No withdrawal was announced, so treat that as observed rather than published. Anyone still listing it is working from a stale page.

Ownership moves too, and it changes appetite rather than just letterheads. Playter has been a Shawbrook Bank brand since December 2025, Time Finance is subject to a recommended cash acquisition announced on 17 August 2026, and Kriya's own site now carries an Allica Bank acquisition banner. The useful question for a borrower is not who has the best brand this quarter, it is which legal entity is on the agreement.

Frequently asked questions

There is no single best provider, because each lender publishes its own floors and exclusions and the one that fits is the one whose criteria your figures clear. YouLend publishes the lowest floors on this list (£1,500 a month in card sales, three months trading) and reads open banking data; 365 Finance sets a £10,000 floor and six to twelve months trading, funds licensed and late-night venues that YouLend excludes, and gives a named account manager; Capify now writes fixed-repayment loans and publishes tolerance for adverse credit; Fleximize allows overpayments without a penalty under its own terms; iwoca is a revolving Flexi-Loan rather than an advance. Every one of them lends directly. We are a broker on the panel side: we check your card turnover, trading time, sector and file against those criteria and put the case to the lenders it fits. We do not advise on which to take.

MCAs are priced with a factor rate, not an APR. Typical UK factor rates run from about 1.10 to 1.40. So a £20,000 advance at a 1.25 factor rate means you repay £25,000 in total, a £5,000 cost. The rate you are offered depends on your card turnover, trading history and risk profile. Always look at the total repayment, not a headline percentage.

Most UK MCA offers sit between 1x and 2.5x your average monthly card sales. A business turning over £20,000 a month on card could typically access £20,000 to £50,000. Published ranges go from around £3,000 (YouLend) up to an advertised £2,000,000 ceiling, but the vast majority of deals we see land between £5,000 and £50,000. You can estimate yours with our free funding calculator.

Faster than almost any other business funding. Decisions are usually same day. Funds typically land in 1 to 3 working days. At the quick end, funds can arrive the same day when the profile is clean and open banking is connected. Compare that to 4 to 12 weeks for a typical high street bank loan.

Often yes. MCA lenders weight your card sales performance more heavily than your credit history, and enquiring does not affect your credit score. Capify and 365 Finance are the providers we lean on most for businesses with a patchier credit history or a previous decline. Nothing is guaranteed, every advance is subject to the lender’s own checks, but credit history alone is rarely the dealbreaker it is with a bank.

An MCA is a purchase of your future card receivables, not a loan. You repay through a fixed percentage of your daily card takings, so payments flex with your revenue: busy week, you pay more, quiet week, you pay less. There are no fixed monthly instalments and no compounding interest, just one agreed total. A business loan (for example through Funding Circle or iwoca) has fixed monthly repayments whatever the tills do, which suits steady income and is less forgiving in a slow month.

Almost always, yes. A personal guarantee is standard across UK MCA providers regardless of which lender funds the deal. It does not mean you are putting your house on the line in most cases, but you are personally backing the advance. We will always tell you exactly what a lender is asking for before you sign anything.

No. Merchant cash advances are commercial agreements and are not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. CapExpand is a commercial finance broker, not a lender or a financial adviser. CapExpand Ltd (FRN 1060885) is an Appointed Representative of White Rose Finance Group Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 630772). Some lenders on our panel are separately FCA-authorised for their own regulated lending. We explain the costs and terms plainly so you can make your own informed decision.

They are built for different businesses. YouLend tends to be cheaper and is excellent for Dojo card users and e-commerce sellers, with a portal-first experience and funding from £3,000. 365 Finance is phone-first with a named account manager, caps repayments at 16% of daily card sales to protect your cash flow, and will fund hospitality and nightlife that YouLend excludes. If you trade in a late-night or licensed venue, or YouLend has said no, 365 is usually our next call.

That is the whole point of an MCA. Because you repay a percentage of daily card sales, a quiet month automatically means smaller repayments. If your takings halve, your repayment that day roughly halves too. There is no penalty, the term simply stretches a little. This is why MCAs suit seasonal businesses like beach cafes, garden centres and Christmas-heavy retailers.

It depends on the lender, and it is the catch most people miss. With a standard MCA the total repayment is fixed up front, so paying down faster does not always reduce the cost. If early settlement savings matter to you, Fleximize is often where that profile completes, since its revenue-based loans allow penalty-free overpayments; a fixed-term loan through iwoca or Funding Circle can also fit. Tell us this matters and we will factor it into who we approach.

YouLend, 365 Finance, Capify and Fleximize are the cash advance and revenue-based lenders this shortlist covers, with iwoca included as the most common alternative, and every one of them is on our panel. Behind those five sit the other unsecured lenders on the panel, and the full roster is published on our lender directory at capexpand.com/business-funding/lenders. Panel composition changes over time, so the directory is the current list.

Because a cash advance is priced from your card data, and each lender reads that data against its own floors on trading time, sector and monthly card sales. Apply direct and it is one application to one lender. Enquire through CapExpand and the same numbers go to the cash advance lenders on the panel whose published criteria you meet, packaged once by a named case handler who knows what each one asks for, and you choose between the offers that come back. We arrange; the lender decides. Our service is free to you, and enquiring does not affect your credit score.

We are paid a commission by the lender when an introduction completes, at no extra cost to you. That is it. We do not charge businesses a fee, and the rate you are offered is the lender’s rate. We work across the whole panel rather than pushing one product, because a deal that does not fit you does not renew, and renewals are how a broker or introducer builds long-term clients.

Sources and further reading

CapExpand Ltd (FRN 1060885) is an Appointed Representative of White Rose Finance Group Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 630772). We are a credit broker, not a lender. We do not provide financial advice.