Merchant Cash Advance Risks and Myths
October 24, 2014
The Lend360 Conference in New Orleans last week had a different vibe from the five other conferences I’ve attended this year. For one, I was a partner in it through DailyFunder. And further, there was a huge focus on best practices, ethics, and regulations. Expert speakers and panelists aired it out to dispel myths and disclose risks.
Most telling about the future was a response from Victory Park Capital’s Brendan Carroll about whether or not he feared looming regulations could hurt the merchant cash advance and alternative business lending industry. As someone who has invested heavily in Kabbage and more recently in Square Capital, he expressed concern about regulations in general but clearly was not convinced they were on the immediate horizon for the industry.
Lisa McGreevy, president of the Online Lenders Alliance moderated the two-man panel which also consisted of John Hecht of Jefferies and she did a great job of digging out the true thoughts from one of the room’s most powerful investors. It’s unlikely a company like Victory Park Capital would invest hundreds of millions of dollars in an industry they believed faced imminent regulatory upheaval.
Merchant Cash Advance regulation is not on any regulator’s immediate agenda but they are doing their homework. At Lend360, it was revealed that several members of the North American Merchant Advance Association met with the Federal Reserve in Washington D.C. months ago for a Q&A. There’s communication occurring now on some levels. Even I’ve been contacted by the Federal Reserve to comment as a part of a broad research assessment.
Eventually I believe the CFPB will try to play a role in the industry through Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act. We’re a long way from there though and it doesn’t mean they’ll be successful. Even internal operatives have expressed doubt on business-to-business jurisdiction.
In the meantime, it’s not all blue seas and sunny skies. Robert Cook, an attorney at Hudson Cook, LLP explained at the conference that the industry is already in many ways supervised by the FTC. And with the FTC, it’s not a question of how high the costs are, it’s about how transparent those costs are. If they’re high, fine, but do the customers understand them and are they marketed accordingly?
Terms like guaranteed, 99% approval rate, and lowest rates can be deemed deceptive if not true.
Transparency, ethics, customer experience, that’s what people in the business need to be focused on right now. Stacking, while a polarizing topic, seems to be a matter of contract law. Everybody’s caught up in the stacking debate believing it’s the lightning rod that will attract regulation. If left unchecked, it might draw interest, but it’s the fundamentals that get overlooked that could draw the ire of an agency like the FTC.
If your marketing says “rates from 1.10 and up”, while actually contracting 99% of your customers with 1.49s, that’s something you’ll probably want to address now. Think about the net cost your customer is likely to be charged. If a 1.10 is a buy rate and there’s a 10 point upsell, a 10% closing fee, and 10% origination fee that makes the end cost closer to a 1.40, you probably don’t want to market the cost as 1.10.
Right now it all basically comes down to doing good business in a transparent manner. Costs may be high but explain those costs, make sure the customers understand them. Don’t be deceptive. There will always be critics of high costs, but rational people are being exposed to the sober reality that you can lose money even at a 50% interest rate.
As a word of advice for new ISOs and brokers, stay away from funding companies that don’t even have a paid email account. If a funder is too financially strapped to afford a web domain, they probably are going to cut corners in other places too. The story about working off a gmail or hotmail account in the interim while they try to get their website set up is indicative that they’re getting ahead of themselves. There are way too many solid funding companies to choose from for you to entertain doing business with hotFunding4ISOsNow@hotmail.com. Even middlemen are accountable in the grand scheme of best practices and the customer experience.
Fund intelligently…
– AltFinanceDaily
Also read:
4/11/14 Regulatory Paranoia and the Industry Civil War
8/13/14 Should Licensing and Accreditation come to Merchant Cash Advance?
Industry Takes ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
August 24, 2014Have you been nominated to take the ALS ice bucket challenge yet?
Kabbage below:
Their video made the local Atlanta news.
OnDeck in Times Square NYC:
Noah Breslow, their CEO also did it:
Funding Circle:
PayPal
Coincidentally, in the industry’s 2012 fantasy football competition for charity, league winner Sure Payment Solutions chose to donate all funds raises ($7,100) to the ALS Association.
Whether you get nominated or not, you can donate at http://www.alsa.org/.
Feel free to tweet @financeguy74 if you or your company accepted the challenge. 🙂
TakeCharge Capital Acquires SBS Capital
July 29, 2013For early release on Merchant Processing Resource:
NEWINGTON, CT- TakeCharge Capital, LLC, an MCA and Loan Service Provider based in Connecticut, proudly announces the acquisition of SBS Capital, LLC a financial services company providing merchant cash advances and credit card processing based in Newington, Connecticut. SBS Capital will rebrand its company under TakeCharge Capital and has appointed Aaron Shimkowitz COO of TakeCharge Capital, former VP of SBS. “TakeCharge’s MCA Portfolio now encompasses 28 Million in Funding to small-mid sized businesses nationwide, including 400+ credit card processing merchants added to the TakeCharge Payments Portfolio respectively.” stated Sam Kota, CEO at TakeCharge.
To accommodate growth, TakeCharge Capital has relocated from 705 North Mountain Road in Connecticut to prime 4,000 square ft facility located on 2600 Berlin Turnpike in Newington Connecticut. “With about 100,000 drivers passing through the turnpike everyday and over 32,000 businesses within a 30 Mile Radius, the Berlin Turnpike marks the first storefront location in our New Retail Strategy. The end-to-end model coupled in a retail environment is by far the best user experience, as we’ve learned from outside industry leaders such as apple and the gap” states Shimkowitz.
In addition to the expansion, TakeCharge Capital has promoted:
- George Korhonen- SVP of Business Development at TakeCharge Capital. In this new role, Mr. Korhonen will continue to develop TakeCharge’s core business and lead new partnerships within the trucking and medical industries.
- Rebeqa Abrams- VP of Operations at TakeCharge Capital. In this new role, Ms. Abrams will continue to manage business operations and direct new operational initiatives to reduce costs and increase overall company efficiency.
And newly appointed:
- Aaron Shimkowitz- Chief Operations Officer at TakeCharge Capital, former VP at SBS. In this new appointment, Aaron will spearhead and oversee all operations, accounting and day to day corporate responsibilities.
- Nicole Beaudry- VP of Funding at TakeCharge Capital, former Director of Cash Management at SBS. In this new appointment, Nicole will oversee funding partnerships and refinance department.
- Jennifer Burke- VP of Sales at TakeCharge Capital, former Executive Underwriting Specialist at SBS. In this new appointment, Jennifer will oversee sales and portfolio retention.
“This partnership with Aaron’s team, further attributes to our long-term strategy of creating a google-like culture with top notch talent and a passion to design technology specifically for the small business community we serve.” states Kota.
TakeCharge Capital, LLC, based in Newington Connecticut is a privately-held financial technology company providing loan and payment services to business owners nationwide. For more information, visit http://www.takechargecapital.com or email info@takechargecapital.com. To speak directly with a TakeCharge Representative reach us Toll-free at 877-417-9473.


Frank, who was the key author of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that was signed into law in 2010, was a longtime champion of consumer financial protections. But he sings a different tune when it’s all about business. Many people may not realize that he opposed the Durbin Amendment of the Dodd-Frank Act, the addition that placed caps and restrictions on debit card interchange fees. Federal restrictions on how much a business can charge another business? Not his thing…
It’s official, alternative business loans can now be pooled up and sold off to investors. On Wednesday,
If a concentration limit is exceeded, the issuer is required to maintain additional credit enhancement. I’m not surprised at all that California, Florida, New York, and Texas are singled out. In addition to being among the most populous in the country, they are the heaviest users of alternative business loans and merchant cash advances. There’s also the theory that Floridians are statistically the least likely to repay a loan, as openly discussed in
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…
Lending Club
Peer-to-peer lending has already been under strong scrutiny from the Federal Government. Lending Club and Prosper are regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission these days, but they may never be free of oversight. Just two months ago, the Federal Reserve published a report on trends in peer-to-peer business lending. They hinted at further regulation.
Commissions
If I had a dollar for every time someone told me that 




























