I think merchant cash advances are a viable form of funding. There is so much
bad press about short term lenders preying on people with low incomes but
that's just not the way it is..

The fact is these types of loans attract these types of people who are
irresponsible with the management of their finances due to the fact that
there are no credit checks in place because the loans are generally low
amount and low risk.

So people take out a loan and they agree to the terms to pay it back but they
don't. When the lenders enforce their terms they get bad press? They want
their money returned as much as the next lender, that's the truth. If people
aren't going to follow the terms then what do they expect?

As for short term business loans I think these can be great for small
business but not for a long term investment. There were plenty of times that
I had run out of cashflow in some of my business' and had no one to turn to,
cash advances can sometimes be a godsend to free up costs like delayed
payments, postage costs and other unexpected costs that arise in a newly
fledged business.

Lily at Entrust does offer great insight into the subject and we recently posted a small extension to try bring further clarification about merchant cash advances. This post was edited to remove a link. Please review our Community Best Practices for more information about how best to participate in our online discussions. Thank you.

Merchant Cash Advances are unregulated but the industry has taken a number of steps to standardize the process. As an aside there has been a growth in alternative business financing that have strengths and weaknesses compared to the merchant cash advance. For certain industries a merchant cash advance is the only way to receive business financing.