Cash advances for merchants, or businesses work differently than your standard individual cash advance or payday loan. Instead of signing over your next paycheck, you are signing over a portion of your future sales to the entity issuing the merchant cash advance. These lenders commonly work with only retail, restaurant and service companies with a lot of credit card sales but that are unable to qualify for standard loans. The interest rates vary, but are usually much higher than payday or cash advance loans for individuals. Business owners should be careful about which company they choose to work with. Merchant cash advances should be treated like any other loan and you need to do your research before choosing this option.
The merchant does not make payments to this type of “loan” and the companies that issue the money for these cash advances do not call them loans. Instead, the lender takes a percentage of the daily credit card sales of the merchant’s establishment until the merchant cash advance amount and the premium is collected. This is usually to happen within 12 months or less. The main selling points to merchant cash advances is that there is no due date for payments, no fixed payment and the money gets paid back faster.