Liberis alternatives: six lenders to quote against the offer already in your card portal
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 liberis.com, opayo.liberis.co.uk, elavon.co.uk, worldpay.com, youlend.com, 365finance.co.uk, capify.co.uk, iwoca.co.uk, fleximize.com, fundingcircle.com and Companies House.
Liberis says it has funded £2 billion to 64,128 small businesses worldwide as at June 2026, and very few of them went looking for it. The offer appears inside a card platform the merchant already uses: Worldpay Business Finance, Elavon, Barclaycard, Opayo, Deliveroo Capital from January 2026, Dojo Flex Funds from 26 February 2026, eBay Flexible Growth Financing from 6 April 2026. Accept it and a slice of the card takings you were already settling goes to repaying the advance.
That is a good product delivered conveniently. It is also, for most merchants, the only offer on the table, which is a different thing from the best one. Liberis quotes one price through one channel, on terms the channel sets, and the merchant sees no second number unless they go and find it.
We do not arrange Liberis. It reaches businesses through card platforms rather than brokers, so we cannot improve a Liberis quote or speed one up. What we can do is put a comparable offer beside it. The six lenders below are the ones we would usually be quoting against a portal advance, with what each substitutes for and what it does not. Every figure was read from the lenders' own pages on 7 September 2026.
Why people look past Liberis
Start with how the offer got there. Liberis says one in five of its deals completes within four hours and that 70% of merchants were funded within one working day of approval in 2025. Speed like that has real value when a fridge dies in July. It also means the first number a merchant sees is usually the last one they look at, because the alternative is filling in forms for a lender who has never seen their card data.
Then the clause that catches people. Liberis agreements carry a minimum monthly amount of up to 3% of the total owed, and the footnote on its explore-funding page adds that any shortfall may be collected by direct debit. The Opayo terms put it at 3% flat, with no “up to”. So the repay-as-you-sell pitch has a floor underneath it: in a quiet January, the gap between what the card split collected and 3% of the outstanding balance can come out of the business bank account. 365 Finance, by contrast, states that there are no additional charges if an advance takes longer to repay.
The channel also sets the ceiling. Direct through liberis.com the published range is £1,000 to £1 million. Through Opayo it is £2,500 to £300,000. Behind those sit five different products with five different thresholds: Starter Capital to £50,000 with no transaction history, Pay with Liberis to £10,000, Working Capital to £1 million with renewal available from 50% paid down, Flex Capital as a revolving limit to £2 million, and Investment Capital for businesses turning over £40,000 a month or more. Which of those a merchant is shown depends on whose portal they are standing in, not on what the business could support.
The credit search is heavier than the market average too. The Opayo FAQ says a full application runs company and consumer credit bureau searches, and that these leave a record on both files that is visible to other finance providers. 365 Finance and Funding Circle both run a soft search at the quote stage. Liberis also asks for personal guarantees from applicants that are limited companies or limited liability partnerships, which its Opayo page states plainly.
Last, the corporate news. On 18 June 2026 Nordic Capital agreed to acquire Liberis and combine it with Qred, the Swedish small-business bank, with completion expected later in 2026, Qred's Emil Sunvisson becoming Group CEO and Blenheim Chalcot exiting as lead investor. Rob Fairfield has run Liberis since August 2025. None of that makes a signed agreement worse. It does mean the product menu behind the portal may look different in a year, which is worth knowing if you were planning to renew rather than shop. Worth reading alongside it: Liberis's own footer states that it is not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and that the Financial Ombudsman Service will not be able to consider a complaint about Liberis, though Liberis Limited is a registered EMD agent of Modulr FS Limited under reference 902157.
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 |
| 365 Finance | Merchant cash advance from a direct lender | £10,000 to £500,000 | 6 months | £10,000 a month in card sales | Typically 5% to 15% of card sales |
| Capify | Fixed-repayment business loan | £10,000 to £3,000,000 | 12 months | £10,000 a month of total turnover | Fixed daily or weekly, 3 to 24 months |
| iwoca | Flexi-Loan credit facility | £1,000 to £1,000,000 | None published (start-ups capped at £10,000) | None published | Monthly; interest per 30 days on the drawn balance |
| Fleximize | Flexiloan and Flexiloan Lite term loans | £10,000 to £500,000 unsecured (£1,000,000 secured) | 6 months (Lite) or 12 months | £5,000 a month | Monthly; interest recalculated on early settlement |
| Funding Circle | Fixed-rate business loan | £10,000 to £750,000 | 1 year | None published | Monthly; fixed rate from 6.9% a year plus a one-off completion fee |
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 like-for-like swap: another advance that lives inside the platform rather than in a branch, repaid as a share of sales, with a single fixed fee and no interest. It powers Dojo's core business funding (Dojo's page says YouLend carries out a soft search), Amazon in the UK, eBay Seller Capital, Just Eat, Epos Now, Tide, Lopay, Teya from January 2026 and Worldline from the same month. If your acquirer is one of those, the YouLend number is as easy to get as the Liberis one was.
Two differences matter against Liberis. YouLend publishes no minimum monthly payment clause anywhere, so a quiet month is a slow month rather than a direct debit. And it is a bigger balance sheet: FY2025 accounts filed in December 2025 show revenue of £171.5m and profit of £8.8m, with EQT as ultimate owner through BC Midco Pte. Ltd. Its own homepage claims approval for nine in ten applicants; Trustpilot showed 4.8 from 12,426 reviews at our check.
What it does not substitute is transparency before you apply. YouLend prints no rate card and no repayment percentage on youlend.com, so the split arrives with the offer. Its settlement account is a condition of financing, meaning processor payouts route through a YouLend account until the advance clears, which is a bigger change to your plumbing than a Liberis split taken at the acquirer. Partner pages put the maximum term at twelve months and typical payoff at six to nine.
365 Finance
365 Finance is the answer for a merchant who wants the same repayment shape from a lender that will tell them the terms first. It publishes the split (typically 5% to 15% of card sales), says the advance is usually cleared in five to ten months, charges one all-inclusive cost with no application, admin or late fees, and states that there are no additional charges if repayment runs long. That last line is the direct opposite of the 3% monthly minimum, and it is the reason we move card-heavy businesses here when takings are seasonal.
It is a direct lender rather than a platform partner, funded by a £150m Pollen Street Capital facility signed in February 2025, and it approves more than 90% of applications on its own count. Trustpilot: 4.9 from 1,135 reviews at our check, with 96% at five stars. Money can land in 24 hours.
What it does not substitute is the small ticket. Liberis's Opayo channel opens at £2,500 a month of card takings and Starter Capital needs no transaction history at all; 365 wants six months of trading, £10,000 a month on cards, and will not write below £10,000. Its unsecured page also asks for twelve months of card statements, which is the longest document request among the card advance names we place.
Capify
Capify breaks the link between the card machine and the funding. Its criteria are twelve months of trading and £10,000 a month of turnover, counted across everything the business takes rather than the card portion, so a garage with a trade account or a restaurant with a big delivery-aggregator share gets sized on the whole picture. Loans run £10,000 to £3,000,000 over 3 to 24 months, priced on a factor rate Capify does not publish, repaid in fixed daily or weekly amounts.
Three of its published rules suit a merchant leaving a portal offer. Capify runs a bad-credit loans page rather than pretending the file does not matter. Its FAQ says the credit check is pulled only at submission, after terms are accepted, which is a lighter footprint than the bureau searches Liberis describes. And it will refinance a competitor's facility once more than half of it is repaid, paying that lender out rather than sitting on top. Trustpilot: 4.7 from 725 reviews.
What it does not substitute is the flexible repayment. A fixed daily amount does not fall in a wet week, which is the whole point of an advance. Capify states that all its products require a personal guarantee, usually from the majority shareholder. It also prices through a broker buy-rate scheme, so the rate you are offered can depend partly on who quoted it. Its own direct site no longer sells a merchant cash advance, though the brokers page still describes one up to £500,000.
iwoca
iwoca is the alternative for a business that wants the money without anyone touching the card takings. The Flexi-Loan is a limit of £1,000 to £1,000,000 held for anything from one day to five years, with interest charged per 30 days on the drawn balance only, from 1.5% a month (its FAQ gives a range of 1.5% to 5.7%). Repay early and there is no fee; iwoca says more than 20% of its customers repay ahead of schedule in their first six months. Nothing is deducted from a settlement account, because there is no settlement account.
It is also the fastest of the non-embedded options: a decision inside 24 hours in almost all cases, money within hours of approval, and a record payout it puts at 2 minutes 37 seconds. It lent £1.3 billion across 58,000 loans in 2025, a 60% increase on 2024, and holds 4.7 on Trustpilot from over 11,000 reviews.
What it does not substitute is the repayment that flexes with sales. Instalments are monthly and fixed whatever the tills did. A personal guarantee from at least one director is required and iwoca states that plainly. The product pages accept limited companies and LLPs only, sole traders are not listed, the rate is variable although iwoca says it cannot change it without the borrower's consent, borrowing beyond twelve months usually adds a fee of 5% to 6%, and a start-up is capped at a £10,000 limit. Limits are sized at roughly one month's revenue, or about 20% of annual turnover.
Fleximize
Fleximize is where a merchant goes when the advance was never really the right shape. 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 from twelve months of trading. Both are sized at up to four months of revenue, all revenue rather than card revenue, and there are no set-up, application or arrangement fees when you apply directly.
The feature that has no equivalent in an advance is the Penalty-Free Promise: settle early and interest is recalculated so you pay only for the days you held the money, which Fleximize says saves early repayers an average of 44% of their total interest. A Liberis fee, like every fixed advance fee, is the fee whether you clear it in four months or twelve. Fleximize lent £149m in 2025 (£688m cumulative), funds 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 low entry bar. The product page floor is £10,000 (its own calculator says £5,000, and we take the product page), minimum turnover is £5,000 a month, and the rule that ends most applications is the homeowner one: non-homeowners are only supported after 36 months of trading and then to a maximum of £20,000. A personal guarantee from at least one director or shareholder is required on every loan, a debenture may be needed, and businesses in Scotland or Northern Ireland get unsecured lending only. Sole traders and small partnerships can apply only above £25,000.
Funding Circle
Funding Circle is the cheapest structure on this page for a merchant who qualifies, and the only one quoted as an annual rate you can hold against a bank. Loans run £10,000 to £750,000 over six months to six years, fixed from 6.9% a year, with a one-off completion fee that varies with risk rating and term. Its own calculator shows what that means: £100,000 over 24 months carries a £6,900 completion fee and £8,668 of interest, £115,568 repayable at £4,815 a month. There are no early settlement fees and overpayments are allowed.
Speed is better than the annual pricing suggests. The application takes about seven minutes, a decision can come in an hour, and funds are typically paid within 48 hours; on the shorter loans of up to twelve months the decision is instant to £250,000 and there is no completion fee when you apply directly. It has lent £18 billion to more than 135,000 UK businesses and scores 4.6 on Trustpilot from around 17,000 reviews.
What it does not substitute is the merchant with a short history. A year of trading is the published minimum, the assessment reads up to eight months of bank statements and the latest full accounts, and since 23 February 2026 Funding Circle has lent only to limited companies and LLPs. Two things from its own pages deserve reading twice: the completion fee is not returned if you settle early, and on the sub-24-month Flexible Loan the personal guarantee is set at twice the initial loan amount.
When Liberis is still the right call
The clearest case for staying is a small merchant with a short history. The Opayo channel asks for four months of card transactions and more than £2,500 a month; Elavon asks for at least ten card transactions averaging £2,500 a month, or twelve months of evidence if you switched. Starter Capital goes to £50,000 with no transaction history at all. Nobody on this page reaches down that far except YouLend, and YouLend will only reach you if your platform carries it. A café four months old doing £3,000 a month on the terminal is a Liberis case, and we would say so.
The second case is not wanting to move anything. The split comes out at the acquirer you already use, so nothing about the way you take payments changes, no settlement account is opened in a lender's name, and the money can move fast: Liberis quotes as soon as two working days of approval through Opayo, and one in five deals inside four hours across the book. There is a 14-day right to change your mind after funding, and Working Capital can be renewed once half the original advance is paid down. Its Trustpilot profile held 4.7 from 1,695 reviews when we checked, with 91% at five stars.
Before renewing rather than re-quoting, get three things in writing: the total fixed fee in pounds, the split percentage, and what the 3% monthly minimum works out to on your balance in your quietest month. Our cost calculator converts a fixed fee over a short payback into an annual equivalent, which is the only fair way to hold it next to a Funding Circle or Fleximize quote. If it wins on that basis, take it.
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.
Frequently asked questions
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.
- Liberis: explore funding (direct range £1,000 to £1m, 3% minimum monthly footnote and direct-debit shortfall, 24-hour funding, 70% funded within one working day)
- Liberis: compare products (Starter Capital, Pay with Liberis, Working Capital, Flex Capital, Investment Capital, renewal from 50% paid down)
- Liberis: about us and homepage (£2 billion to 64,128 businesses, 40+ partners, 15 countries, FCA and Financial Ombudsman footer wording, EMD agent reference 902157)
- Liberis and Qred to join forces under Nordic Capital (18 June 2026)
- Liberis and Dojo partner to provide day-one access to capital (Dojo Flex Funds, 26 February 2026)
- Opayo by Liberis: range, four-month and £2,500 eligibility, personal guarantee wording, bureau searches, 3% minimum, 14-day cooling-off, two working days
- Elavon: Liberis business funding (ten card transactions averaging £2,500 a month, 10% split example)
- Worldpay: Business Cash Advance provided by Liberis (four to twelve month settlement, 14-day cancellation)
- Trustpilot: Liberis (4.7 from 1,695 reviews, 7 September 2026)
- YouLend: merchants page and FAQs (up to £2,000,000, single fixed fee, 24-hour approval, 48-hour funding, nine in ten approved)
- YouLend: payment account terms and conditions (settlement account as a condition of financing)
- 365 Finance: merchant cash advance (£10,000 to £500,000, 5% to 15% of card sales, five to ten months, no additional charges if repayment runs long)
- 365 Finance: FAQs (six months trading, £10,000 monthly card sales, soft search, no application, admin or late fees)
- Capify: FAQs (£10,000 monthly turnover, twelve months trading, 3 to 24 month terms, factor rate, personal guarantee, 50% refinance rule, credit check at submission)
- Capify: brokers page (broker buy-rate scheme, merchant cash advance to £500,000)
- iwoca: Flexi-Loan (£1,000 to £1,000,000, one day to five years, from 1.5% per 30 days, no early repayment fee, 2 minutes 37 seconds record)
- iwoca: FAQ (1.5% to 5.7% a month, limits around one month’s revenue, £10,000 start-up cap, personal guarantee from at least one director)
- iwoca closes £250m funding structure with a leading UK bank (27 July 2026; £1.3bn lent across 58,000 loans in 2025)
- Fleximize: Flexiloan and Flexiloan Lite (amounts, terms, monthly rates, personal guarantee, same-day funding)
- Fleximize: FAQs (four months’ revenue sizing, homeowner rule, Penalty-Free Promise and 44% average saving, Scotland and Northern Ireland, sole trader threshold, debenture)
- Funding Circle: small business loans (£10,000 to £750,000, six months to six years, from 6.9% a year, completion fee, personal guarantee, documents, speed)
- Funding Circle: loan calculator (£100,000 over 24 months, £6,900 completion fee, £115,568 repayable)
- Funding Circle: non-limited loans (sole traders and partnerships withdrawn from 23 February 2026)
- Companies House: Liberis Limited, 05654231
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Important information
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, and we do not provide financial, tax or legal advice. We work with a panel of lenders whose particulars are available on request. If a deal completes the lender pays us a commission, at no cost to you; different lenders pay different amounts under different models, and we will tell you the amount for your deal on request. All lending is subject to status, valuation where applicable and the lender's own checks.
Registered office: Pure Offices, Lake View Drive, Annesley, Nottingham, NG15 0DT. Company No. 14433858.