A merchant cash advance (MCA) is not a loan. Instead, a funder buys a slice of your future sales at a discount. You receive a lump sum today, and the funder collects repayment by taking an agreed percentage of each day's credit-card batch or bank deposits. When sales spike, you pay faster; when sales dip, the daily remittance shrinks. Because underwriters focus on sales volume rather than credit score or collateral, files with blemished credit or no real estate often clear approval faster than bank applications. The trade-off for speed and flexibility is cost: the factor rate (the multiplier applied to the advance) typically results in a higher effective expense than a conventional term loan.