A merchant cash advance (MCA) and a Credit Corp loan both provide a lump sum of working capital, but how you repay them is very different — and that difference has a significant effect on cash-flow planning.
How a merchant cash advance works
An MCA provider advances a sum and recovers it by taking a fixed percentage of your daily or weekly card terminal receipts until the total owed (advance plus a factor fee) is repaid. In high-revenue periods you repay faster; in slow periods repayment slows. There is no fixed term — the payback timeline depends entirely on your sales volume.
How Credit Corp works
A Credicorp Loan is a fixed sum over a fixed short term with a known repayment schedule from day one. You know exactly what goes out and when. This predictability matters when you are managing supplier commitments, payroll, or tax deadlines alongside the repayment. Credicorp Flex offers draw-and-repay flexibility, but again with clear, pre-agreed terms — not a variable sweep of your revenue.
Eligibility and sector fit
MCAs are almost exclusively available to businesses with significant card-terminal revenue — typically retail, hospitality, or food service. Credit Corp lends to a wider range of UK limited companies and LLPs across sectors, provided the company meets our trading and credit criteria. There is no card-terminal integration required, and no director personal guarantee.
We lend only to UK limited companies and LLPs, and the loan is to the company with no director personal guarantee. As business finance outside the consumer-credit regime, it is not covered by the Financial Ombudsman Service or FSCS.
See also: Credit Corp vs invoice finance, Credit Corp vs a bank business loan.