Capify vs 365 Finance: same kind of borrower, two different shapes of money

Who Capify actually is

Capify has been lending to British small businesses since 2008, from First Floor Hamilton House on Church Street in Altrincham. It began as the UK arm of the American lender AmeriMerchant, took the Capify name in 2015 and sold the US business in 2017, and still runs an Australian operation out of Parramatta. Its own homepage claims over £1.2 billion funded to more than 20,000 businesses, with customers renewing three times on average. The invoice finance page claims 100,000-plus businesses funded, which does not agree with the homepage, and we take the smaller figure.

Two entity details are worth pinning down, because Capify's own footer muddles them. The footer says the trademark is licensed to United Kapital Limited (06575165) and “Capify Uk Limited (Company Number 10183728)”. At Companies House, 10183728 is registered as Capify Limited, incorporated 17 May 2016 and formerly United Kapital Newco Limited, while Capify UK Limited is a separate company, 11715963, incorporated in December 2018. Our own review carried the footer's version until this check. Read the front page of any agreement for which company is actually lending.

The lending is backed by a £100 million facility from Pollen Street Capital agreed in April 2024, which replaced a £75 million line from Goldman Sachs. There is no FCA authorisation statement anywhere on the site, terms or privacy pages, which is ordinary for commercial lending to limited companies and means the agreement is your only protection. Capify won SME Lender of the Year at the 2023 Credit Awards. Our Capify review goes through the full product menu.

Who 365 Finance actually is

365 Finance is the trading name of 365 Business Finance Limited, company 08267810, incorporated on 25 October 2012 and working out of Manor House on Soho Square. It has published more of its terms than almost anyone else in this market, and that is the reason we keep sending it deals: a business owner can work out roughly what they will be offered before speaking to anybody. Warren Abbey has run it since April 2024, with founder Andrew Raphaely still on the board.

The published shape is one product wearing two page titles. Advances of £10,000 to £500,000, repaid at typically 5% to 15% of card sales, typically clearing in five to ten months with no fixed end date and no extra charge for taking longer. Six months of trading and average card sales of at least £10,000 a month. Twelve months of card statements at application, no credit check at all for a provisional quote and a soft search once approved. Over 90% of applications approved. The page selling “unsecured business loans” is the same card-split product under a different heading, which is worth knowing before you compare it against a term loan.

Behind that is a £150 million senior secured facility from Pollen Street Capital agreed on 25 February 2025, supporting more than £300 million of originations a year, on a relationship running since 2018, with a euro line funding the Irish launch of the same month at €10,000 to €250,000. It won a King's Award for Enterprise for Innovation in 2024 for its Rev&U underwriting platform, Best Fintech Lender at the Lending Awards 2025 and SME Lender of the Year at the Credit Awards 2025. Like Capify it claims no FCA permissions, and its collections run through a Modulr electronic-money account. Our 365 Finance review covers how an application runs.

Sweep or schedule: the only question that matters

Strip out the branding and this comparison reduces to one mechanical choice. 365 takes a percentage of card sales as they settle, so a wet Tuesday costs less than a bank holiday weekend and the finish date moves rather than the fee. Capify takes a set amount on working days regardless, so the cost is predictable and a bad fortnight is entirely your problem. Neither is safer in the abstract. They fail in opposite directions.

The sweep protects cash flow and hides its cost. Because the fee is fixed and the term is not, an advance that runs long is not more expensive, which sounds excellent until you notice that the money leaves before it reaches your account and you never see the payment as a line in your bank statement. The schedule does the reverse: the cost sits in a forecast where you can see it, and the direct debit lands in January whether the doors opened or not. Businesses that fail on a sweep tend to fail slowly. Businesses that fail on a schedule tend to fail on a specific Tuesday.

There is a size argument too. 365 stops at £500,000 and sizes the offer against card turnover, so a business with £250,000 a month going through the bank but only £15,000 across the terminal will be offered against the smaller number. Capify underwrites against turnover from 12 months of bank statements and runs to £3,000,000, with secured, bridging and asset lines alongside. If cards are a minority of what you take, the sweep is measuring the wrong thing. Our merchant cash advance hub sets out which lenders still write which shape.

What each one does with a bumpy credit file

Both sell themselves on looking past the score, and both back it up in a different way. Capify has run a bad-credit business loans page for years, publishes no approval rate at all, and underwrites from 12 months of business bank statements plus owner identification. The detail we find most useful is the timing: the credit check is pulled only at submission, after terms have been accepted, and its broker channel can produce indicative offers with no search at all. A business collecting several quotes can see a Capify number without adding a footprint.

365 gets to the same place by a different route. There is no credit check for a provisional quote at all, and once approved the search is soft, so nothing visible lands on the file either way. What it does look at is 12 months of card statements, which is a longer window than most of this market asks for and a reason a seasonal business gets a fairer read: a full year of statements shows the January as well as the August. Its April 2026 release reports 43% more restaurants and 39% more pubs and bars funded in the first quarter of 2026 than a year before, which is a sector doing badly enough to need money and being given it anyway.

The published floors decide most declines before underwriting sees anything. Capify wants 12 months of trading and £10,000 a month of turnover. 365 wants six months and £10,000 a month specifically across the card terminal. A nine-month-old cafe taking £14,000 a month on cards clears 365 and misses Capify by a quarter. A three-year-old wholesaler taking £120,000 a month through the bank and nothing on cards clears Capify and cannot be sized by 365 at all. On guarantees, Capify publishes that every product requires one, usually from the majority shareholder; 365 asks for one but publishes no scope, and our guarantee guide explains why the scope is the part to read.

Where each one stops

365 sells one product, and it is worth being blunt about that, because the site sells it twice. The page headed “unsecured business loans” describes the same card-split advance as the merchant cash advance page: the qualification wording is six months of trading and £10,000 of card turnover, and the repayment period is the same five to ten months. If you arrive at 365 hoping for a term loan with a monthly instalment, there is not one. The ceiling is £500,000, the money has to be sized against card takings, and a business whose customers pay by bank transfer is outside the model however healthy it looks.

Capify stops in different places. There is no card-split product for a customer arriving at the website, whatever a comparison roundup told you. Below 12 months of trading or £10,000 a month of turnover the answer is no, and no amount of flexibility on the credit file changes it. There is no published price for the loan products at all, which makes a Capify quote impossible to sanity check against anything except another quote. And the stacking rule cuts both ways: a business halfway through a facility with somebody else cannot use Capify until more than half of it is repaid.

One thing neither will do is give you a rebate for paying early. A fixed fee is a fixed fee at 365, and a factor rate sets the total payback at Capify before the first repayment leaves. If you expect a lump of cash in six months and want to use it to cut the cost of borrowing, both of these are the wrong shape and a facility priced on daily interest is the right one. Our business loans guide covers where that sits.

How fast the money lands

Capify makes the louder claims: eligibility in 30 seconds on the homepage, a conditional approval in 60 seconds on the loan page, same-day approvals, funding possible within 24 hours and 24 to 48 hours on secured deals, with an application described as around ten minutes. 365 publishes approval within 24 hours and funding in as little as 24, with one page promising unsecured finance in less than 48.

Those two headline sets are closer than they look, because they measure from different starting points. A 60-second conditional approval is a pre-qualification, not an offer, and the 12 months of bank statements and identification still have to arrive. 365's clock starts after a phone call with the account manager, which is the single commonest reason a 48-hour deal becomes a four-day one: the director is busy, the call slips, underwriting waits. Neither delay is the lender being slow. Both are the paperwork arriving late, which is the one part of the timetable a borrower controls.

The bit nobody mentions

Start with the referral. 365 Finance hosts a Capify-branded registration and quote page carrying a Capify marketplace email address. Set that beside a direct Capify site with no cash advance on it and the arrangement is easy to read, even though neither company has published an explanation, and we will not pretend to know the commercial terms. What it means practically is that a card-split enquiry aimed at Capify may end up in front of 365 anyway. If that is where it was going, going there directly is fewer hands on the file.

Second, the price of an introduction. Capify's broker page describes a buy rate scheme under which an intermediary can sell above the rate Capify quoted, so the customer's price moves with the broker's margin. 365 runs an introducer portal and an open lending API and publishes no equivalent scheme. We think anyone taking a Capify quote from any intermediary should ask what margin sits on top of it, and that includes asking us.

Third, where the money physically sits. 365 says plainly that its payment account runs through Modulr FS Limited for services 365 is not itself authorised to provide. That is a safeguarded electronic-money account rather than a bank account with compensation-scheme cover, which is fine for collections and no place to leave a float. Capify publishes nothing comparable about its collections plumbing, which is not a criticism so much as a gap. And on renewals: Capify counts three per customer as a selling point, and once it has paid out a competitor under the 50% rule it is also the obvious lender for the next facility. That is convenience quietly turning into a habit.

Worked examples

365 publishes no rate card, so the 12% fee below is our assumption, chosen to make the arithmetic visible. Capify publishes no factor rate at all for its loans, so its example carries no cost figure: what it shows is the schedule. The card takings and the split are ours. The 5% to 15% band and the 3 to 24 month range are both published.

Who fits where

Profiles of the kind that reach us, set against the criteria each lender publishes. The middle column is which door fits, which is not the same as telling anyone what to do.

General information on how the lenders differ, not a recommendation. We arrange finance; the lender decides, and you choose.