Business loans·11 min read·Updated 7 September 2026

Momenta Finance review 2026: the lender formerly called Merchant Money

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 momentafinance.co.uk, Momenta’s own February 2026 broker product guide PDF, the Momenta Finance Limited group accounts to 30 June 2025 at Companies House, and Trustpilot’s own widget data for the business unit published in Momenta’s page markup.

The short answer

Momenta lends £50,000 and up to UK limited companies and LLPs with two years of trading and £350,000 of turnover, priced as a variable rate from SONIA plus 3% over 6 to 84 months. A personal guarantee is taken on every loan, including its Growth Guarantee Scheme lending, and at least one person of significant control has to be a homeowner even when the loan is unsecured.

Two things have changed and neither is obvious from a comparison table. The merchant cash advance is gone, with both product pages returning 404, and the case studies Momenta has published since April 2026 are all property and development deals rather than working capital. A shop turning over £180,000 that came to Momenta for a card advance in 2025 has nowhere to land here in 2026.

Our view in one line: a reasonable home for an established limited company borrowing six figures against a homeowner director, and the wrong door entirely for a sole trader, a start-up or anyone who wants repayments to flex with sales.

Key facts

Legal entity

Merchant Money Ltd (04504897), trading as Momenta Finance

Unsecured loans

£50,000 to £350,000 standard; £350,000 to £500,000 enhanced

Secured loans

£50,000 to £1.5m, first or second charge

Term

6 to 84 months, interest-only up to 12 months unsecured

Rate

Variable, “starting at SONIA+3% p.a.”

Arrangement fee

Charged, spread over the term, not payable upfront

Minimum trading

2 years; start-ups are not eligible

Minimum turnover

£350,000, from the latest filed accounts

Borrowing capacity

Typically up to 15% of annual turnover

Structures

Ltd or LLP with a Ltd partner; sole traders excluded from the loans

Personal guarantee

Yes, on every loan including Growth Guarantee Scheme lending

Merchant cash advance

Withdrawn; both product URLs return 404

FCA reference

FRN 722951 on its own site, for consumer credit activity

Trustpilot

4.7 from 108 reviews, read 7 September 2026

Momenta’s own product pages, FAQ and February 2026 broker guide, plus Companies House, checked 7 September 2026.

What we can place with Momenta Finance

Momenta Finance sits on our panel with 5 live products across 3 categories. This is what we hold, not what they advertise.

Category	Products	Size	Term	Rate
bridging finance	2	£200,000 to £5m	1 month to 2 years	1%
unsecured business loans	2	£50,000 to £500,000	6 months to 6 years	6.88% to 11.22%
secured business loans	1	£50,000 to £1.5m	12 months to 6 years	11.49%

Spans across Momenta Finance products on our panel, checked September 2026. Shown per category, because one range across different product types would describe something no business can actually have. These are not offers, quotes or rates you will be given, and a dash means we hold no published figure for that field. All lending is subject to status and the lender's own checks. Naming a lender is a fact about our panel: it is not an endorsement of CapExpand by Momenta Finance, and implies no affiliation. Panel composition changes.

Who Momenta are, and the name on the paperwork

The lender is Merchant Money Ltd, Companies House 04504897, incorporated on 6 August 2002 under the wonderfully unhelpful name GET IT ON (2002) LIMITED and renamed Merchant Money on 10 June 2013. Momenta Finance is a trading name. The holding company above it, Momenta Finance Limited (14423247), was incorporated on 17 October 2022 as Merchant Money Holdco Limited and renamed on 21 April 2023 when the brand changed. Registered office for both is 3rd Floor, 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE. The old domain, merchantmoney.co.uk, now serves nothing but a meta refresh to the Momenta site.

Momenta's own website terms get this wrong. They say the site “is operated by Momenta Finance Limited” and that “We are registered in England and Wales under company number 04504897”. That number belongs to Merchant Money Ltd; Momenta Finance Limited is 14423247. The footer, to be fair, states it correctly. It is a small error, but if you are checking who you are contracting with before signing a guarantee, read the offer letter rather than the terms page.

Leadership has turned over recently. Tim Boag, previously Group Managing Director of Business Finance at Aldermore, became chief executive on 1 September 2025. Chris Forrest, formerly Head of SME at Barclays UK, joined as chief commercial officer, and a head of marketing was announced on 21 August 2026. Funding has grown alongside: a Shawbrook facility extended and upsized to £50m in September 2025 with a three-year extension through 2028, and a £125m forward flow facility announced on 9 February 2026 from a party Momenta describes only as a leading global investment bank. We cannot verify a counterparty nobody names.

Where the merchant cash advance went

Momenta used to write a business cash advance repaid as a percentage of monthly card takings. On 7 September 2026 both of the URLs that carried it, /merchant-cash-advance/ and /business-cash-advance/, return HTTP 404. The Wayback Machine holds a working capture of the merchant cash advance page dated 5 March 2026, so the product disappeared at some point in the six months after that. It is absent from the current navigation and from the February 2026 broker product guide.

We found no withdrawal announcement, which is why we describe it as observed rather than announced. For what it is worth, the archived page described £10,000 to £150,000, no fixed term, top-ups after four months, a factor rate from 1.18 and a minimum of £10,000 a month of card turnover. Momenta's own July 2025 press release announcing its new chief executive still listed cash advances among its range, so this is a recent change of shape rather than an old one.

If that is the product you came for, the lenders still writing it sit on our merchant cash advance hub. Momenta is no longer one of them, and any comparison page still listing it as an MCA provider has not checked since the spring.

What Momenta lends in 2026

Four things sit under the loans banner. Unsecured business loans run £50,000 to £350,000 as standard and £350,000 to £500,000 on the enhanced tier, over 6 to 84 months, with an interest-only period of up to 12 months if requested. Secured loans run £50,000 to £1.5m over the same term against a first or second charge, up to 75% LTV on residential and mixed use and 65% on commercial, with a stated interest-only option of up to 24 months. A primary residence cannot be taken as security. Growth Guarantee Scheme lending mirrors those limits, unsecured to £350,000 and secured to £1.5m, over up to 72 months.

The other half of the business is property. Bridging runs £200,000 to £5m over up to 24 months on a first legal charge, with interest rollable for the full term subject to LTV. Commercial mortgages go to £1.5m at a rate Momenta publishes as starting at SONIA plus 7%. Commercial property equity release goes to £1.5m over up to 72 months from SONIA plus 6%, with “typical fees are 2% up-front”. Development finance runs £200,000 to £4m to 75% LTV and 85% of cost. Sole traders and partnerships are accepted on bridging and development, which is worth knowing because they are not accepted on the business loans.

Read the success stories and the direction is unmistakable. Every case study Momenta published between April and August 2026 is a property or development deal, ranging from £1.4m to £4.3m. The unsecured loan is still there and still funded, but the growth is not coming from it.

What it costs, and the early settlement contradiction

Momenta prices business loans as a variable annual interest rate benchmarked to SONIA, published on both the product pages and the broker guide as “Variable starting at SONIA+3% p.a.” Its own February 2026 announcement of the £125m facility describes “loans with interest rates starting from just 7% per annum”, which is broadly the same statement at current SONIA. A variable rate means the payment can move, and Momenta's own jargon buster defines it as one that changes periodically. There is an arrangement fee: the FAQ says “a small arrangement fee is charged, which is spread over the loan term and not payable upfront”, without giving a figure.

Now the part we would want in writing before signing anything. The unsecured loan page and the broker guide both say “Over or early repayment terms: Zero” and “No fees for early or over repayments”. The FAQ on the same website says: “You can make over-payments of up to 10% of the outstanding loan balance annually without incurring any early settlement fees. For early settlement, fees apply based on the timing of the settlement.” Those two positions cannot both be right. We will not repeat either one as fact, and if early settlement matters to your plan, ask Momenta to confirm the position in the offer letter rather than relying on a web page.

The homepage calculator adds a third figure to the pile. It offers amounts from £10,000 to £1.5m and quotes a “Monthly Interest Rate: 1.2%”, which is roughly double the SONIA-linked pricing and sits below the £50,000 minimum the product pages set. It looks like legacy content. Take the product pages and the broker guide as the current position, and treat anything the calculator produces as an illustration rather than an offer. Repayments are collected by monthly direct debit, with extra payments accepted by transfer, debit card or PayPal.

Who gets approved, and who does not

The published criteria are unusually specific for this end of the market. Two years of trading, no start-ups. Minimum annual turnover of £350,000 evidenced through the latest filed accounts. Registered in the UK, generating more than half of income from trading, with the facility used mainly to support UK trading. England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are all in scope. Any county court judgments must be settled or in the process of being settled.

Two criteria decide more cases than the rest. The first is structure: the borrower must be a limited company, or an LLP with at least one corporate partner, so a sole trader cannot take a Momenta business loan at all. The second is the homeowner test, quoted verbatim from the broker guide: “At least one Person of Significant Control (PSC) must be a homeowner for unsecured loan amounts up to £350k and two homeowners are required for £350-500k.” A profitable company whose directors rent is not eligible for unsecured money here, however good the accounts look.

The third constraint is a sizing rule that most comparison sites miss. Momenta's FAQ says “Typically, we can lend up to 15% of your company's annual turnover”. On £600,000 of turnover that is roughly £90,000, whatever the £350,000 headline says. Above £350,000 the underwrite gets heavier again: a statement of personal assets and liabilities from all guarantors, management information dated within the last three months, consolidated accounts where the applicant sits in a group, and borrower calls as part of the process. No sector exclusion list is published for the business loans. The only exclusions on the site are the Growth Guarantee Scheme's own, which rule out banks, building societies, insurers and reinsurers other than brokers, public sector bodies and state-funded schools.

Guarantees, security and the broker question

Momenta is direct about guarantees, and the answer is yes across the board. The product guide lists “Personal Guarantee: Yes” in both the unsecured and secured columns. The FAQ expands it: “Standard unsecured loans require no security, but for limited companies, we request a personal guarantee from at least one director or shareholder. Enhanced unsecured loans require a personal guarantee from two homeowners. Secured loans may require a debenture over the company or a charge on personal or commercial property.” The Growth Guarantee Scheme page adds: “We require a personal guarantee on all our loans, including those taken under the Growth Guarantee Scheme.” The government guarantee protects the lender, not the director.

One line on the unsecured loan page deserves more attention than it gets: “Momenta Finance, acts as both a lender and a broker. Where we act as a broker, we receive a commission from the lender.” An application made to Momenta may be placed with someone else entirely. That is not a criticism, it is how we work too, but it does mean going direct to Momenta is not necessarily a single-lender decision, and you should ask whose paper you are being offered.

On regulation, Momenta's footer carries “Authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Firm reference number: 722951” alongside the clearer statement that “Our lending to limited companies, incorporated partnerships, and unincorporated partnerships of three or more is not regulated by the FCA”. That second sentence is the operative one for almost every borrower reading this page: a business loan to a limited company is not a regulated credit agreement, so the Consumer Credit Act protections and, for most SMEs, the Financial Ombudsman Service do not apply. We took the FRN from Momenta's own site and its own broker PDF and did not confirm it against the Financial Services Register, so treat it as their published claim. Elsewhere on the same site the wording loosens to “We are also registered with the Financial Conduct Authority”, which is not the same statement at all. No default interest rate and no stacking policy are published anywhere.

What the filed accounts show

The Momenta Finance Limited group accounts to 30 June 2025, filed on 4 March 2026, report turnover of £22,332,648 against £13,660,258 the year before, described in the strategic report as a 63% increase. The loss before taxation narrowed to £1,436,551 from £3,545,868. The loan book reached £98.8m, up 31% from £75.5m. Cash at bank was £1,206,615 against £4,069,324 a year earlier, and the average monthly headcount including directors was 26.

The balance sheet carries net liabilities of £7,154,621, with £114,273,872 of creditors falling due after more than one year. That is the shape of a debt-funded lender rather than a distress signal, and the auditor concluded the going concern basis was appropriate with no material uncertainties. What it does mean is that we would not describe Momenta as financially strong, and neither should anyone else without reading the same pages. Growth here is funded by wholesale facilities, which is why the Shawbrook and forward flow announcements matter more than the profit line.

The accounts also date one of the headline numbers: part of the year's growth is attributed to “Enhancing our business loan product by increasing the max loan size from £350k to £500k”. The £500,000 ceiling is that recent. On reviews, Trustpilot's own widget data for the business unit embedded in Momenta's pages showed a TrustScore of 4.7 from 108 reviews on 7 September 2026, of which 94 were five-star and 5 were one-star. Momenta says it has supported 2,500 SMEs and disbursed £250m, which is a company claim rather than an audited figure.

Who Momenta Finance suits

A good fit if

A limited company or LLP with two full years of accounts and £350,000-plus of turnover
A director who is a homeowner and is content to give a personal guarantee
Borrowing between £50,000 and £500,000 where a fixed monthly direct debit fits the cash flow
A property investor or developer wanting £200,000 to £5m on a first charge, which is where Momenta’s recent deals sit
A business that wants an interest-only period of up to 12 months at the start of the term

Look elsewhere if

Sole traders: the business loans are limited to Ltd companies and LLPs with a corporate partner
Start-ups and anyone under two years of trading, which Momenta’s FAQ rules out in one line
Directors who rent, because the homeowner test applies even on unsecured lending
A retailer or restaurant wanting repayments taken from card takings, now that the cash advance has gone
Anyone borrowing on the basis of no early settlement fee until Momenta resolves the contradiction on its own site
A company wanting more than about 15% of its turnover, whatever the £500,000 headline suggests

Our verdict

Momenta is a competent mid-market lender that has quietly become a property lender with a business loan attached. For an established limited company with a homeowner director, six figures over five or six years at a SONIA-linked rate is a sensible shape, and the interest-only opener is genuinely useful for a business funding a fit-out or a hire that pays back later. The criteria are published in more detail than most of the panel manages, which makes it quick to know whether a case is dead before anyone wastes a week on it.

Where we are firmest: we would not send a business here on the strength of the no early settlement fee claim. A lender whose product page and FAQ disagree about whether it charges to settle early is a lender you get the answer from in writing. The other honest limitation is reach. Between the two-year rule, the £350,000 turnover floor, the homeowner test and the 15% of turnover cap, a large share of the enquiries we see are out before underwriting starts, and those cases go to the lenders on our business loans hub with looser entry criteria. Momenta is on our panel, so where a case fits we put it to them alongside the rest and let the offers decide. Every figure above is subject to Momenta's own checks.

Momenta Finance is on our panel. So are the lenders it competes with.

One enquiry and we check your numbers against Momenta Finance and the rest of the panel before anything is submitted. We arrange; the lender decides.

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Frequently asked questions

Yes. The lending entity is Merchant Money Ltd, Companies House 04504897, which trades as Momenta Finance. The holding company was renamed from Merchant Money Holdco Limited on 21 April 2023, and merchantmoney.co.uk now redirects to the Momenta site.

No. Both the merchant-cash-advance and business-cash-advance pages returned HTTP 404 on 7 September 2026, and the product is absent from the current navigation and from the February 2026 broker guide. The last working archived capture is dated 5 March 2026. Momenta published no withdrawal announcement that we could find.

Unsecured lending runs from £50,000 to £350,000, or to £500,000 on the enhanced tier with two homeowner guarantors. Secured lending runs to £1.5m. The practical limit is usually the FAQ’s sizing rule: “Typically, we can lend up to 15% of your company’s annual turnover.”

Its product pages and broker guide both say “Variable starting at SONIA+3% p.a.” for business loans, and its February 2026 announcement refers to rates “starting from just 7% per annum”. Commercial mortgages start at SONIA plus 7% and commercial property equity release at SONIA plus 6%. The rate is variable, so payments can move.

Its own pages disagree. The unsecured loan page and the broker guide say “No fees for early or over repayments”, while the FAQ caps over-payments at 10% of the outstanding balance a year and says “For early settlement, fees apply based on the timing of the settlement”. Get the position confirmed in the offer letter before signing.

Yes, on every loan. The product guide lists “Personal Guarantee: Yes” for both unsecured and secured lending, two homeowner guarantors are required between £350,000 and £500,000, and the Growth Guarantee Scheme page says a guarantee is required on scheme loans too.

Not for the business loans. Momenta requires “a Limited (Ltd) company or a Limited Liability Partnership (LLP) with at least one partner being a Ltd company”. Its bridging and development finance pages do accept a sole proprietor as the borrower.

At least one person of significant control must be a homeowner for unsecured loans up to £350,000, and two homeowners are required between £350,000 and £500,000. That test applies to unsecured lending, not only to secured deals.

Momenta says it aims to answer “on the same day or within 48 hours” of receiving an application and supporting documents, with funds transferred within 48 hours of approval subject to documentation. Its bridging page claims a decision in as little as one hour.

Its footer states it is authorised and regulated by the FCA under firm reference number 722951 in respect of consumer credit activity, and says plainly that lending to limited companies, incorporated partnerships and unincorporated partnerships of three or more is not regulated. We took that FRN from Momenta’s own site and have not confirmed it against the Financial Services Register.

The group accounts to 30 June 2025 report turnover of £22.3m, a loss before tax of £1.4m, a loan book of £98.8m and net liabilities of £7.2m against £114.3m of long-term creditors. The auditor identified no material uncertainties over going concern. That is a leveraged balance sheet rather than a solvency question, and a borrower owes the lender, not the reverse.

Both, by its own account: “Momenta Finance, acts as both a lender and a broker. Where we act as a broker, we receive a commission from the lender.” An application made directly to Momenta may be placed with a third-party lender, so ask whose facility you are being offered.

Sources and method

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