Merchant cash advance for retail and e-commerce

Retail lives and dies on stock and timing. You often need to buy in bulk ahead of a peak season, pay for it upfront, then wait for the tills and the website to turn that stock back into cash. A Merchant Cash Advance bridges the gap by giving you a lump sum now and collecting repayment as an agreed percentage of your daily card and online takings. When sales are quiet the repayment eases, which protects your cash flow through slow months rather than adding a fixed bill to them.

The product is not limited to the high street. Online only retailers qualify too, because lenders can assess takings processed through providers such as Stripe, PayPal, Shopify Payments and other gateways in the same way as a physical card terminal. Whether your revenue comes over the counter, through a checkout, or both, the advance is sized against that transaction volume and repaid automatically from it, so there is no separate standing order to manage.

Retailers most often use a Merchant Cash Advance to pre buy stock for Christmas, Black Friday or a summer peak, to fund a marketing push before a busy trading window, or to smooth a genuinely seasonal cash flow gap. It is designed for short to medium term needs where flexibility is worth more than the lowest headline rate. For a large shop fit out or a long term investment, a term business loan or asset finance may work out cheaper, and we will point that out rather than steer you into an advance.

• Pre buying stock ahead of Christmas, Black Friday or summer peaks
• Funding a marketing push before a busy trading window
• Smoothing seasonal cash flow gaps in quieter months
• Bridging the wait between buying stock and selling it