365 Finance Review UK 2026: Rates, Approval, Speed and What Actually Happens

If you are weighing up 365 Finance for a UK merchant cash advance, this is the version of the page we wish we had read before we started routing deals through them. We send applications to 365 Finance every week. We see what gets approved, what gets declined, where they win against YouLend and where they do not. This review is built from that.

The short version. 365 Finance is the right call for any UK business owner who wants a named account manager on the phone, who values the 16% daily sweep cap, who runs a nightclub or seasonal hospitality venue, or who has already been declined by YouLend on a deal that ought to fund. They are not the cheapest mainstream MCA option (YouLend usually is, at the best end), but for a large slice of UK SMEs they are the right answer.

Who 365 Finance actually is

365 Finance is the trading name of 365 Business Finance Limited, a London-based direct MCA lender that has been in operation since 2012. About 90 employees as of late 2025. They have advanced over £572 million to UK SMEs since launch.

The thing to understand about 365 is that they are a direct lender, not an embedded finance platform. They fund deals from their own balance sheet rather than plugging into someone else's checkout. That structural choice shapes every part of how they work. The underwriting is accountant-led rather than algorithmic. The relationship is phone-first rather than portal-first. The 16% daily sweep cap is enforced rather than negotiable. When the team describes 365 internally we tend to say “they run like a traditional finance house with a fintech veneer, not a fintech that happens to do lending.”

They are good at it. 365 won SME Lender of the Year at the 2025 Credit Awards and Best Fintech Lender at the 2026 Lending Awards. Award judges in this space tend to weigh broker feedback and complaints data heavily. 365 consistently scores well on both. Their published Trustpilot rating sits between 4.6 and 4.8 across several thousand reviews.

From a broker desk, our experience is that the team at 365 are responsive and relationship-driven. They pick up the phone. They remember your client. They flag when a deal is going to need a conversation rather than ghost the application and produce a generic decline. That alone earns them a meaningful share of our placements.

What you actually pay

Like every UK MCA lender, 365 charges a fixed fee rather than interest. You take a lump sum, the fee is set at the start, and you repay the total over time as a small share of your daily card takings. The fee does not compound, does not grow if you pay slower and does not shrink if you pay faster.

We do not publish specific factor rates for 365 (or for any of our lenders) on a public page. Pricing is set per deal and we share live numbers through your application. What we can tell you up front is where 365 typically sits and what they will not do on price.

Honestly, 365's pricing usually lands close to standard mainstream MCA levels. It is rarely the cheapest fee in the UK market on a like-for-like deal (YouLend's Dojo partnership pricing tends to take that crown). On most deals where both lenders would approve a clean profile, 365's fee is comparable to YouLend's typical pricing and slightly higher than YouLend's cheapest end. The trade-off is the 16% daily sweep cap, which we think is one of the most underrated things in the UK MCA market.

Look, the 16% cap is the headline. Other UK MCA lenders will sometimes offer you a bigger advance at a higher daily sweep. That sounds fine on paper until you are three months in and a quarter or more of every card transaction is leaving your account before you see it. 365's underwriting team treats 16% as a hard line they will not cross, even when the merchant asks for more money. Their stated logic: they would rather fund less and protect the business than fund more and damage it. That is an accountant-led view and it shows up consistently in every offer.

The catch is that the cap means the maximum offer is sometimes smaller than a merchant expects for their card turnover. If you came in chasing £100k on £40k monthly card sales, you will get less from 365 than you might elsewhere. We tell clients up front: if you want the biggest possible number, this is not your lender. If you want the offer that protects your cash flow at a sensible level, this is the one.

How much you can borrow

The official range is £10,000 to £500,000. In practice, most deals we place through 365 sit in the £25,000 to £75,000 band. Larger advances are common where the business has strong card turnover and the 16% cap allows the maths to work.

The amount is anchored to monthly card turnover. As a rough guide: one to two times monthly card turnover is the comfortable zone for most businesses with two years plus trading. A solid hospitality business doing £45,000 a month on cards might land an offer of £35,000 to £45,000 at the 16% cap. The same business with three years trading and a clean credit profile might push to £60,000+. Anything above £250,000 needs a real underwriting case behind it and usually a strong trading record.

Data source affects the maximum offer the same way it does at every UK MCA lender. Open banking opens the door to substantially larger offers than bank statement uploads because the underwriter has structured, unforgeable transaction data to work from. Statement-only applications tend to cap out lower because the data is less verifiable.

How long it actually takes

The honest answer is reliably 24 to 48 hours from a complete application to funds in the bank account. Faster than that is rare. Slower is also rare. The thing 365 is known for in our broker desk is predictability, not maximum speed: when they say 48 hours, it tends to be 48 hours.

That predictability is genuinely useful. With some lenders you can get funded in seven hours on a clean deal and have another client waiting five days on a deal that should have been similar. 365 is the lender we lean on when the client needs to know with confidence when the money will arrive. A pub doing a Thursday refit needs the money on a Wednesday, not a vague window of one to four days.

The application takes a bit longer to prepare than the average MCA portal because 365 wants a phone conversation with the account manager before underwriting starts. We tell clients to block 30 minutes for that call. Once the call is done and the documents are in, the 24 to 48 hour clock starts.

Approval reality

365 publishes an approval rate of around 90% for qualified applications. That is an application-level number measured at the underwriting desk, the same kind of denominator that YouLend uses for its published 91% and 84% figures. It is not the same as approving 9 in 10 enquiries through the front door, because some enquiries fall out at pre-qualification before they ever reach the underwriting team.

Where 365 really earns their share of our placements is in the “decline at YouLend” bucket. A typical week might look like this: a Leeds restaurant with a single satisfied 2023 CCJ on one director, declined by YouLend on credit. Submitted to 365 with a short note explaining the CCJ. Approved within 36 hours. A Manchester nightclub that YouLend will not look at on principle. Straight to 365, funded inside the week.

The most common reasons we see 365 decline an application:

1. Trading history too short. Below 6 months of trading or below £10,000 monthly card sales is usually a quick no.
2. Industry on the exclusion list. Gambling, adult, certain crypto, debt collection and short-term lending businesses. Pure e-commerce businesses with no card-present sales sit outside their model regardless of turnover.
3. Affordability at the 16% cap. If the maths only works at a higher daily sweep, they will not stretch.
4. Defaulted with 365 previously. Same as every lender, the link travels with the director.
5. KYC and document issues. Mismatched ID, addresses that cannot be verified, or a director who cannot be reached for the account manager call.

The difference between 365's decline list and YouLend's is that 365 will pick up the phone before declining a borderline deal. We have had multiple cases where the account manager called us, asked one specific question (often about why a director has a CCJ, or about a missing month of card data) and the deal proceeded. That kind of human escalation does not happen at fully automated lenders.

Industries 365 funds and excludes

The fit picture at a glance. 365 is one of the most sector-flexible mainstream MCA lenders in the UK market.

The headline difference between 365 and most other mainstream UK MCA lenders is nightclubs and late-night licensed venues. YouLend will not fund these unless they serve substantial hot food. 365 welcomes them. If you run a nightclub or a late-night music venue, save yourself the application time elsewhere and go straight to 365.

The team has spent years understanding hospitality seasonality, refurbishment cycles and the way restaurant cash flow actually moves through a year. That sector specialism comes through in the underwriting conversation. They ask the right questions and they do not panic at a quiet January.

The pubs we send to 365 tend to be the larger ones (£20,000+ monthly card) or the food-led ones where the business needs a six-figure advance. Smaller pubs with tighter card volume sometimes price better through YouLend on the Dojo partnership, so we will compare both before deciding where to send the deal.

The application step by step

Most reviews skip this. The detail matters because each step has a way it can stall. Here is the map, with the watch-outs we have learned from placing deals.

The piece that surprises first-time MCA applicants the most is the account manager call. It is not a sales pitch. It is a working conversation about the business, the use of funds and the trading pattern. The account manager is gathering colour that the underwriter will use. A clean, well-prepared call shortens the path to a decision. A vague conversation about “we need some working capital” tends to stretch it.

What the marketing pages do not tell you

Five operational realities worth knowing before you sign. Most are common to every UK MCA, but the way 365 handles them is worth understanding.

The thing nobody tells you about 365 is how much the account manager relationship matters down the line. A year into a clean repayment, your account manager is already thinking about the next deal. They have watched your card volume, they have seen your business trade through busy and quiet seasons, and they will often have an indicative offer ready before you ask. That continuity is genuinely useful if you plan to use MCA finance regularly.

Renewals and top-ups

The standard MCA rule across the UK market is that a top-up opens at 60% of the original balance repaid. 365 follows that as a baseline but is more flexible than most. With a clean repayment history and a strong business, the door can open at 40% to 60% paid.

Renewals price similarly to or slightly better than the original advance. The reasoning is straightforward. The business has now built a repayment record with 365, the underwriting risk has come down and the relationship has value to both sides. Renewals are also faster than the initial application because most of the data is already in place and the account manager has watched the trading pattern.

The 16% cap holds in renewals too. A top-up is sized so the combined daily collection stays under 16%. We see some merchants surprised that a top-up is smaller than they expected. That is the cap doing its job. The same cash flow protection that made the original deal sensible is still protecting the business on the second advance.

When 365 Finance is not the right answer

365 is the right call for a wide slice of UK SMEs but not every business is well-matched. A few cases where we send the deal elsewhere.

You are a pure e-commerce business with no card terminal. YouLend is the lender for online sellers. Their Shopify, Amazon and eBay integrations let them underwrite an online business in minutes. 365 is built around card terminal data and is rarely the right call here. Our full YouLend review covers that side.

You want fixed monthly repayments. MCA repayments flex with your card take. If you want a predictable fixed monthly outgoing, look at iwoca or Funding Circle instead.

You want the cheapest mainstream MCA fee on a clean profile. If your business is on a Dojo machine, you have strong credit and a clean trading record, YouLend on the Dojo partnership route usually prices sharper than 365 on the same deal. We cover the full comparison in our YouLend vs 365 Finance breakdown.

You have been declined by 365 already. Capify takes a second-look approach for deals that 365 has turned down. If the deal still has merit, that is the next call.

Your trading history is under six months. YouLend will go down to three months of card sales for the right business. 365 generally wants six months as the published floor. Below that, a traditional loan product or a different revenue-based finance option is usually a better route.

Honestly, if a client asks us where they would have fitted at 365, our team usually starts with two questions: how much monthly card turnover, and is the business in an industry 365 funds? If those two answers are clean, the conversation moves quickly.

A real placement: the Manchester gastropub

To make this concrete, here is the shape of a deal we placed through 365 Finance recently. Details anonymised.

A Manchester gastropub doing £45,000 a month on cards. Three years trading. Two directors, one with a 2023 CCJ that was satisfied but still showing on file. They wanted £35,000 for a refurbishment ahead of a busy autumn. We submitted to YouLend first because of the Dojo partnership pricing. YouLend declined on credit within four hours, citing the director's CCJ.

That deal is the textbook 365 placement. Where YouLend auto-declined on credit, 365's human-led underwriting looked at the business as a whole, checked the credit context, and funded it. The 16% cap sized the offer sensibly. The account manager relationship meant the deal moved quickly once underwriting had what it needed.

Frequently asked questions

Common questions we get from UK business owners about 365 Finance. Tap any question to expand on mobile.

Sources and references

1. 365 Finance official site and product pages
2. 365 Business Finance Limited Companies House record
3. 365 Finance’s published merchant data including approval rates and Trustpilot performance
4. 2025 Credit Awards results, SME Lender of the Year category
5. 2026 Lending Awards results, Best Fintech Lender category
6. Trustpilot review pages for 365 Finance
7. UK Financial Conduct Authority register entries for relevant authorisations
8. NACFB lender directory entries
9. 365 Business Finance Limited annual accounts filed with Companies House
10. Industry trade press including Insider Media, AltFi and Business Cloud
11. YouLend Limited Companies House record (for comparison)
12. CapExpand internal placement experience across UK MCA lenders