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| Product Name | First American Merchant Business Loans |
|---|---|
| Requirements | Minimum personal credit score of 500. At least 6 months in business. |
First American Merchant is a California-based lender that offers unsecured merchant cash advances. This type of financing is designed for businesses with lots of consumer sales — like retail or e-commerce businesses. It works by giving you an advance on your business’s future sales, which you pay back with a percentage of your daily sales. Unlike many other types of merchant cash advances, this one comes with interest and fees, rather than just a fixed fee.
First American Merchant’s partner lenders offer both a traditional merchant cash advance and an ACH funding program. With the traditional cash advance, your lender withdraws a percentage of your daily credit card sales until your loan, plus the factor rate, is paid off. With the ACH funding program, it withdraws from your daily bank account deposits. If your credit score is over 700, your business might be able to qualify for biweekly, weekly or even monthly repayments.
First American Merchant is not forthcoming about the loan amounts, rates and fees its partner lenders offer for its merchant cash advances. It also doesn’t offer a ballpark range of loan terms.
Own a cannabis dispensary? First American Merchant also works with lenders that offer merchant cash advances specifically designed for medical marijuana companies. Your cannabis business can get an advance between $2,500 and $100,000 of its future sales. The same two types of financing are available with this option. It also isn’t forthcoming about the loan costs and terms.
On top of connecting you with business loans, First American Merchant’s partners offer financing programs for your customers, also known as point of sale (POS) financing. Through this program, your customers can borrow up to $5,000 with a loan term of 3, 6 or 12 months, and your business will get paid in full within three days of the purchase.
First American Merchant’s minimal eligibility requirements and openness to high-risk borrowers might make it a valuable resource for businesses struggling to find a loan. It’s also more hands-on than many other online business loan connection services, taking care of the application for you rather than directing you to a lender. While it has over 100 partner lenders, it’ll bring your application to three or four that it thinks might be the most suitable for your business.
Almost nothing. As of June 2018, it gets an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau (BBB), which it’s been accredited with since 2016. It only has one customer review on its BBB page, a complaint about giving First American Merchant their bank login credentials before being rejected. First American Merchant responded, explaining the application process and why that borrower was rejected.
We weren’t able to find any other customer reviews on Trustpilot, Yelp, Reddit or other online forums.
Eligibility requirements vary, depending on which program you qualify for. To be eligible for a merchant cash advance, your business must:
To be eligible for the ACH funding program, you must:
You might be asked to submit the following documents when you apply for a loan from First American Merchant:
You can either get started on your application through its website or over the phone. To apply over the phone, call 800-210-5649. Follow these steps to apply online:
Merchant cash advances typically take around 72 hours to get your funds, while ACH loans can take at least five days.
It depends on what type of financing you qualify for. Most businesses start to make daily repayments through a percentage of your daily sales — whether that be credit card transactions or deposits into your business bank account. Some might qualify for repayments once or twice a week, or even once a month.
Daily repayments are typically automatic. Less frequent repayments might have more options. But you might want to choose automatic repayments anyway — that way you won’t have to take time away from your work schedule to repay your loan. Regularly check in on your bank account and loan balance to make sure everything is running smoothly. If you have any questions or notice an error, reach out to customer service as soon as possible by calling 800-210-5649.
First American Merchant could be a good resource for businesses in high-risk industries or owners with less-than-perfect credit. It’s also one of a few resources for cannabis business loans. But its lack of transparency on loan amounts and costs could be a red flag for some borrowers. To check out other business loans and learn about your financing options, you might want to visit our guide to business loans.
