Capify business loans and cash advances: terms and eligibility

Capify loans are short-term business loans for established UK businesses. Capify says it started in the UK in 2008, during the financial crisis, and has since funded more than £1.2 billion across the UK and Australia. Its UK office is in Altrincham, outside Manchester, and it says it lends across the UK, including Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Its FAQ lists these products:

• Unsecured small business loans. £10,000 to £3,000,000 with no collateral, but a personal guarantee.
• Secured loans. £50,000 to £3,000,000, secured against a business or personal asset, which Capify says is typically lower cost.
• Supplier invoice payments. Capify pays a supplier’s invoice and you repay over 30, 60 or 90 days.
• Other products. Cash flow loans, bad credit business loans, bridging loans, commercial mortgages, asset finance, debt consolidation, debt refinancing and VAT loans.

Our guide to unsecured business loans explains how this kind of borrowing works in general.

Capify’s loans are repaid in small, frequent instalments. Its FAQ says the total payback figure is broken into daily repayments, and its homepage FAQ says repayments are collected daily or weekly rather than monthly.

Its pages give different terms, so ask for the term in writing. The FAQ on loan amounts says terms range from 3 to 24 months, depending on the business’s monthly turnover. The homepage FAQ says 3 to 12 months, and a menu card on the same site says terms of up to 5 years for small business loans.

• Pricing. Capify says it uses a factor rate based on risk to set the total payback and term, looking at your daily balance, gross monthly sales and credit score. A factor rate fixes the total you repay at the start; our guide to comparing business loan lenders explains how to compare it with an APR.
• Fees. Capify says an online enquiry is free, but a full loan application incurs origination and processing fees. It says it provides a document setting out its fees and total payback before you sign.
• Early repayment. Its homepage says there are no early repayment fees.

Not on the pages we read. Capify’s merchant cash advance address now shows its Supplier Invoice Payments product, and its current product list does not include a merchant cash advance. Check with Capify directly if you are looking for card-sales-linked repayment.

Supplier Invoice Payments works like this, in Capify’s own terms:

• You receive an invoice from a supplier and apply to Capify using it as proof of purchase.
• Capify pays the supplier directly, so the money does not come to your account.
• You repay over 30, 60 or 90 days by daily or weekly instalments on working days.
• A standard processing fee applies per facility and per invoice.

A fee of 4% for 30 days is a high cost over a year, so compare it with paying the supplier on longer terms. Our guide to trade credit covers asking suppliers for time to pay.

Capify lists these criteria before it will take an application:

• A business registered in the UK.
• Trading for at least 12 months.
• Minimum monthly turnover of £10,000, or £120,000 a year.
• Applicants aged 18 or over.

It says it does not lend for start-up funding, to buy a business, or to businesses trading for less than 12 months. It will consider business owners with adverse credit, and it will refinance a competitor’s loan once more than 50% of it has been repaid, though it says it does not stack loans alongside another lender’s.

For documents, Capify asks for 12 months of business bank statements, linked or sent manually, the owner’s ID, landlord details, personal references and proof of ownership. It says it runs a credit check only when it is ready to submit your application, once you accept its terms. Our explainer on soft and hard credit checks explains the difference.

Our guide to personal guarantees for business loans explains what a guarantor is liable for.

Daily repayments come out of your account on working days, whatever your takings that day. Capify says this smooths the impact on cash flow compared with one large monthly payment, and for a business with steady daily income that can be true. For a business paid by customers monthly or in large lumps, a fixed daily debit can drain the account between receipts.

• Divide the total payback by the number of working days in the term to see the daily figure.
• Set that figure against your quietest weeks, not your average.
• Check what happens if a payment fails, and whether you can switch to weekly.

Our guide to short-term business loans covers how repayment patterns differ across lenders.

Capify’s unsecured loan repays fixed daily or weekly sums. A merchant cash advance takes a percentage of your card or total sales instead, so repayments fall when sales fall. These providers in the Capzy lender directory publish that kind of product:

A fixed repayment tends to suit steady takings and a known end date; a sales-linked one tends to suit takings that swing by season. Either way, compare the total amount repayable.

Capify’s site says its brand is a trademark licensed to United Kapital Limited (company number 06575165) and to company number 10183728, registered in England and Wales at Hamilton House, 249 Church Street, Altrincham. Companies House shows United Kapital Limited as an active private company incorporated on 24 April 2008, with the nature of business “other credit granting”, and company 10183728 as Capify Limited, also active.

Capify points customers to its Trustpilot and Google reviews. Read a range of recent reviews on those sites rather than an average score, and set them beside Capify’s written terms: what you repay, how often, and what the guarantee covers.

Capify says it can fund in as little as 24 hours once approved. Treat any funding time as an aim; see our guide to same-day business funding for what affects it.

Capzy is a credit broker, not a lender, and is paid by the lender. You can check your options across several lenders with a soft search that does not affect your credit score; a lender’s full application may use a hard search.