Opens Doors to the Financial World for Many Retailers. The merchant cash advance industry is growing at an astonishing clip. This growth is because traditional banks are not meeting the needs of small businesses.
This product is very unique. It's a purchase of an asset, not a loan, so we have to use specific language consistent with a purchase of an asset, like retrieval rate and discount rate instead of interest rate. A lot like factoring but it's of a sale that hasn't yet happened.
A cash advance provider gives merchants a lump sum cash advance up front. In exchange, merchants agree to pay back the principal and fee, by giving the company an agreed percentage of their credit card sales until their balance is zero. This percentage is between 12%-24%. The payback time-frame is only 5-12 months.
Merchants generally must use the providers' credit card processor because the advance is paid back automatically as a percentage of each batch's proceeds. A small number of merchant cash advance companies do not require the merchant to change credit card processors. So if this would be a problem, make sure to ask the merchant cash advance company you are thinking about working with.
Cash advances are very different from traditional funding programs. In essence merchant cash advance providers purchase a small percentage of future MasterCard and Visa revenues, and the merchant repays this as a daily percentage of those revenues.
