Penny review UK 2026: single invoices at 100%, and the clauses to read first

Which company, and which website

Two things need clearing up before anything else. The brand now trades as Penny rather than Penny Freedom, and the live site is pennyfreedom.co.uk. The .com version of that address is a parked GoDaddy listing offering the domain for sale, so a client who types it in has not found the funder. We do not link it from this page.

The trading company is Penny Limited, number 11972051, incorporated on 1 May 2019 and registered at Archibald House on Wykes Bishop Street in Ipswich, which matches the site footer. Its filed classification is factoring. There is a second company called Penny Freedom Limited, number 12215421, registered in Portsmouth, and it is dormant with a filed classification meaning no activity. Citing that one, as several directories do, points at the wrong entity.

No FCA authorisation statement and no firm reference number appear anywhere on the site, including its legal pages. For business invoice finance that is the correct position, because the activity is not regulated. Whether Penny Limited holds any FCA registration, including for money laundering supervision, is not something we could confirm, so we make no claim either way and we do not attach a reference number to it.

What Penny does well

The product is deliberately narrow. Two facilities exist, spot invoice finance and confidential invoice discounting, and neither is a whole-turnover facility. There is no asset based lending and no trade finance. A client picks an invoice, Penny buys it, and the client gets on with the job.

Three features are genuinely good. The advance is 100% of the invoice for a single fixed percentage fee, with no setup fee and no monthly service charge, so a business that finances one invoice a quarter pays for one invoice a quarter. The minimum invoice is £500, which is low enough for a small trade business to use. And the underwriting looks at the customer rather than the client: Penny's own framing is that shifting the focus to the creditworthiness of the client's customers levels the playing field. Payment terms up to 90 days are accepted.

The eligibility list is where Penny separates itself. Sole traders are accepted on spot invoice finance, and construction, haulage and contracts with local authorities are named explicitly on the homepage as sectors it supports. Those are the exact profiles that whole-turnover factors restrict or decline, and it is the reason a Penny case is sometimes the only case.

Two published figures should not be used. The spot page states a maximum invoice of £500,000 in one place and £250,000 in another, on the same page, and the discounting page says up to £500,000. Since Penny's own pages disagree, no maximum can be quoted honestly, and the fee percentage is not published anywhere at all.

What the published terms say that the marketing does not

Penny publishes its service terms and conditions, which is more than several competitors do, and reading them is worth twenty minutes of anyone's day. They describe a stricter arrangement than the website.

Start with clause 9.4, verbatim: “You and all Director(s) of the business under which you have created a Penny App account are personally liable and responsible for the repayment of any Debt.” That is a personal guarantee in substance, imposed by the standard terms rather than negotiated deal by deal, and it applies to every director rather than the one signing. Set against the marketing line that no collateral is needed and that a client typically does not need to put up assets like property or equipment, the two statements pull in opposite directions. A director should assume the terms govern.

Next, recourse. Clause 7 says that where a debt remains unpaid after its due date Penny may require the client to repay the purchase price of that debt. The facility is therefore full recourse, notwithstanding the sales language about Penny buying the invoice. The costs that follow are set out in the same clause and they stack: a one-off administration fee of £250 applied immediately after the due date passes, a debt administration recovery fee of 10% of the unpaid debt on the same trigger, any court or collection costs, and late payment interest of 8% a year accruing daily. On the £500 minimum invoice, the flat £250 alone is half the face value. Clause 9.1 puts a default trigger at seven days past due, which is a shorter fuse than the fortnight a client might assume.

Three further clauses are worth knowing about. Clause 9.3 makes a written certificate from Penny's officer or auditor binding and conclusive evidence in legal proceedings, save for manifest error. Clause 3.5 bars the client from setting off money it owes Penny against money Penny owes it, which runs one way only. Clause 10.4 lets Penny vary the standard terms at any time, with 30 days for the client to terminate if they object. None of these is exotic in commercial finance. All of them are things a business owner would want to have seen before signing rather than after.

The confidentiality question

Penny markets a product called confidential invoice discounting, and its page for that product promises discretion, with the client's customers unaware of any third-party involvement. Clause 5.2 of the service terms says the opposite: the single invoice finance facility is disclosed to customers, and each invoice must be raised on the Penny App and carry a notice of assignment in terms Penny approves. Clause 5.1 adds that the client will not attempt to collect any debt unless asked to, which sits awkwardly with a discounting product where the client is told they keep collections.

We cannot reconcile those, and we do not think a borrower should have to. There may be a separate set of terms for the discounting product that is not published, or the terms may predate it. Either explanation is plausible and only Penny can give the right one. What we do is ask for written confirmation, on the specific facility, of whether the customer will be notified, before anyone relies on confidentiality as a reason to choose Penny. Any client whose main concern is what a large customer will think should treat the question as decisive rather than administrative.

What changed on 13 April 2026

Four filings at Companies House share one date. On 13 April 2026 Peter John Tuvey was notified as a person with significant control holding 75% or more of shares and votes, with the right to appoint and remove directors. Daniel McPherson ceased to be a person with significant control on the same day. Two directors, Daniel McPherson and Paul Jonathan Friedlander, resigned that day. And a charge created and delivered that day records Fleximize Services Limited as entitled to a first legal mortgage over the company. A week later, on 20 April 2026, the previous charge in favour of North Road Capital Limited was satisfied. A third director, Vaida Narbutaite, resigned on 30 April 2026, leaving Mark Alan Tuvey as the sole serving director.

That is what the register says, and it is all it says. No press release announcing an acquisition of Penny by Fleximize was published by either party as far as we can find, so we report a change of control and a change of secured lender rather than a transaction with a name on it. Peter Tuvey is publicly associated with Fleximize, which is context rather than confirmation.

The practical consequence for a broker is simple enough. Ownership and the funding line behind the product both changed five months ago, and appetite, pricing and criteria can move with them. We confirm current terms with Penny directly on each case instead of relying on what was true last year, and any client comparing quotes should date-check whatever they were told.

Who qualifies, and the difference between the two products

The criteria differ by product and the difference is easy to miss. Spot invoice finance is open to a limited company, a partnership or a sole trader. Confidential invoice discounting is open to a limited company and, in Penny's own wording, not a partnership or sole trader. Both require the business to be HMRC registered and based in England, Scotland or Wales, to invoice other businesses for goods or services already delivered, and to have an invoice of £500 or more.

Northern Ireland sits outside that list, which is worth flagging because several funders on our panel cover it. No minimum turnover or trading history is published, consistent with a model that underwrites the debtor. That said, the terms are not indifferent to the client: clause 1.3 requires a warranty that there has been no adverse event with the customer in the previous three months, so the claim circulating on third-party sites that Penny runs no checks on the client is not something we would repeat.

Speed, reviews, and the questions to ask before signing

Speed is a real strength, with a caveat. Registration takes under ten minutes because there is no facility to negotiate, only an account to open. Penny's marketing quotes funding in as little as two hours, three-hour lending decisions and 24 hours for a first-time user. Its contract is more conservative: clause 1.1 commits to payment within approximately one working day. When a client is timing a payment run around it, the contractual figure is the one to plan on.

On reviews, Penny scores 3.9 from 113 Trustpilot reviews, read on 7 September 2026, and the shape matters more than the average. Around 79% are five star and about 15% are one star, with only 29 reviews in the past twelve months. That is a split profile rather than a middling one, which usually means the product works very well for the cases it fits and badly for the ones it does not. Penny publishes no leadership information, and we found no press coverage of the company between 2024 and 2026.

So here is what we put in writing before a client signs anything with Penny. Does clause 9.4 apply to this facility, and does it bind all directors or only the applicant. Is this facility disclosed to the customer, and will a notice of assignment appear on the invoice. What is the fee percentage on this invoice, inclusive of VAT. What happens on day seven, day fourteen and day thirty if the customer has not paid, in pounds. And which entity is the counterparty, Penny Limited or another. Four of those five answers are already in the published terms. Having them confirmed for the specific deal costs nothing and settles the question.