Matt Lenzie, Founder & Editor
Matt Lenzie has spent more than 25 years arranging commercial finance across the United Kingdom, structuring and placing more than £500 million of funding for trading businesses, developers and investors. Merchant Loans is his reference site for the funding products sold to card-taking businesses under the merchant loan label.
Much of that career was spent on the lender's side of the table. He knows how funders underwrite card turnover, where a factor rate should sit, and the difference between an agreement that is a loan in law and one that is a purchase of future receivables, which is the distinction this site keeps returning to.
Merchant Loans is an editorial hub. Where readers want funding arranged or costs modelled, it points to the specialist sites and tools that do that job, and says plainly when it earns an introduction fee for doing so.
What this site does, and does not do
Merchant Loans owns the vocabulary. We explain what a merchant loan is, why almost everything sold under that name is a merchant cash advance rather than credit, what the structure costs, which kinds of company provide it, and how to judge one offer against another. That is the whole job.
We do not arrange funding, we do not take enquiries for finance, and we publish no calculators or best buy tables. Those tasks belong to specialists, and we point readers to them: to a broker when a requirement needs putting to a panel of funders, to a calculator when a factor rate needs turning into a total and an annualised cost, and to provider reviews when the question is about a specific funding programme.
How this site makes money
Plainly, so you can weigh what you read here. Merchant Loans earns introduction fees. Where a reader follows a link from this site to a specialist firm and goes on to take funding through them, we may be paid a fee by that firm. You pay nothing extra, and the fee does not change the terms you are offered.
The sites we link to for funding, cost modelling and provider reviews are part of the same portfolio, under common ownership with this one. We say so here rather than burying it, because a reader is entitled to know when a recommendation points at a related business.
What that money does not buy is placement. We publish no rankings of funders, we accept no payment to feature or favour a provider, and no company named on this site has paid to appear or been given sight of what we wrote about them. Where we describe a funder we describe it factually and make no claim about its current criteria or pricing, because those are quoted per business and change.
Editorial standards
Every guide is written and reviewed by the named author, carries its review date, and is checked against how these agreements are actually documented. We publish no invented case studies, testimonials or statistics. Worked examples are labelled as illustrative and use round figures. Product characteristics are hedged as typical, because factor rates, holdback percentages and advance sizes vary by funder and by business. Where a figure would need a source we do not have, we leave it out rather than estimate it.
We also try to be useful about what is missing. Most merchant cash advances to limited companies are unregulated, which means several protections borrowers assume they have do not apply. Saying so is not a criticism of the product; it is the single most important thing a reader can know before signing one.
The operating entity
Merchant Loans is a trading name of Lenzie Consulting Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 08174104, registered office Lynch Farm, Kensworth, Dunstable, LU6 3QZ. We are an introducer, not a lender or a funder, and we do not provide financial, legal or tax advice. Nothing on this site is an offer of finance.