No matter whether you run a business and need a merchant cash advance, business financing or a term loan, it can be really hard to find a quality company to provide you with the funding you need to make your business dreams come true. It’s even harder to find a lender that you feel you can trust, let alone one that makes the whole process stress-free.
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Last Updated: May 27, 2023
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That’s where Forward Funding comes in. They provide an efficient way to get the funding you need, conveniently from your home, and give you the money you need fast. We’ll tell you everything you need to know about Forward Funding in our Forward Funding review.
One of the things we wanted to cover in our Forward Funding review is a bit about the company. It’s important to know about any company you trust with your finances, so with that in mind we’ll tell you what we know about Forward Funding.
Forward Funding is a Canadian Fintech company that’s based in Montreal. They offer a range of financial services, such as merchant cash advances and term loans aimed to help small-medium- sized businesses in Canada.
They say on their website that they provide the highest approval rates and the lowest term loan cost in the Fintech industry.
They focus on providing funding options that help your business keep moving forward.
In our research for this Forward Funding review we found that they guarantee that they will offer funding programs for your business that are better than other advances offered by other providers. They’ve also issued a challenge to show them better funding deals that they can’t beat.
They aim to keep improving their technology platforms to maintain an excellent customer experience, and they strive to provide outstanding support.
And they want to build business relationships that are founded on trust, open communication and transparency.
If you can’t tell from the wording of our Forward Funding review, Forward Funding is a relatively new Fintech company. There’s actually very little about them on the internet, but they’re doing a really good job of establishing their online presence, regardless of the lack of online reviews about their services.
We feel like this wouldn’t be a proper Forward Funding review if we didn’t tell you about their programs, benefits and requirements. So, here’s a look at Forward Funding’s programs:
While we were researching Forward Funding’s programs for our Forward Funding review, we learned that this is the ideal option for anyone in need of fast funding with minimal paperwork.
| Benefits of Forward Solution | Requirements of Forward Solution |
| ⏰ Funding in 24 hours or less – Up to $50,000 – Online application process | – You must have been in business for 6 months or more. – You have to make $80,000 or more in sales per year. – No minimum beacon score |
This is a good idea if you need funding and know you’ll make enough money in sales to pay it back. It allows you to leverage future sales made with credit and debit cards to get the funding you need now.
| Benefits of Merchant Cash Advance | Requirements of Merchant Cash Advance |
| – Flexible repayment – Terms up to 12 months – Up to $50,000 | – You must have been in business for a year or more. – You have to accept credit and debit card payments. – You must have a beacon score of 550 or higher. |
We found during our research for this Forward Funding review that their term loan is the way to go if you need a chunk of cash fast, and don’t want to pay high rates. With Forward Funding’s term loans you can get up to $250,000 within about 7 days and they provide the lowest rates in the industry.
| Benefits of Term Loans | Requirements of Term Loans |
| – Get up to $250,000 – Terms up to 18 months – Fixed repayment: You pay either daily or weekly | – You must have been in business for 4 years or more. – You must make $400,000 in sales per year or more. – You must have a beacon score of 650 or higher. |
You’ve probably been reading our Forward Funding review and wondering what a term loan is, but don’t worry we’ll explain it all.
You may be reading this section of our Forward Funding review and asking why a person would choose a Term Loan. People favor them because they have more flexible payments and generally provide lower interest rates. Other reasons that people choose term loans include:
A term loan means that the borrower is supplied with a lump sum of money, with the understanding that they’re contractually obligated to meet certain requirements in order to qualify for the loan. One of these requirements is paying the loan back and adhere to a payment schedule.
There’s also either a fixed or floating interest rate involved in the agreement. Sometimes Term loans require that the borrower make a big down payment in order to cut down on the payment amounts.
They’re typically awarded to small businesses that have good sales numbers and can provide financial statements that are appealing to financial institutions.
They’re used for things like upgrading or buying new equipment, buying real estate for things like production or warehouse purposes, and other upgrades that could be considered fixed assets to improve the business and lend to its continued success.
We found while reading about term loans for our Forward Funding review that some businesses even use term loans to fund their monthly business expenses, and some banks offer term loan packages to help cater to these businesses.
Term limits come with either a fixed or a variable interest rate, as well as a set maturity date. If you use the money to buy a particular asset, then the lender will assess the useful life of the asset and that will have an affect on the repayment schedule.
Term loans typically require not only collateral, but there’s also a difficult approval process to get through. The reason they make the approval process a bit difficult to complete is to ensure that risky borrowers don’t make it through the process and then default on their loan.
There are three different types of term loans that we wanted to discuss in our Forward Funding review:
Short-term loans are typically awarded to businesses that don’t meet the qualifications for a line of credit. The loan terms are typically less than a year. However, the term “short-term loan” can refer to loans up to 18 months.
Intermediate-term loans are typically between 1-3 years. You pay for an intermediate-term loan monthly using your company’s cash flow to pay for it.
Long-term loans last anywhere from three to 25 years. The company’s assets are used as collateral, and monthly or quarterly payments are made using either company profits or cash flow.
If you’ve got a long-term loan, they can stipulate or bar you from other financial commitments, like dividends, principals’ salaries and other debts. They can even require you to set back a specific portion of your profits to pay back the loan.
Another thing we’d like to explain in our Forward Funding review is what a merchant cash advance is and how it works. This is one that’s complicated, so not everyone understands them or even knows about them.
A merchant cash advance is different from getting a small business loan. In fact, we found in research for this Forward Funding review that most lenders who provide merchant cash advances will state that they’re not technically loans.
If you get a merchant cash advance, you’ll get a lump sum of cash upfront. The trade-off is that the lender will get a percentage of future sales from your business.
Ordinarily, merchant cash advances are for businesses who get most of their revenue from debit or credit cards. (Restaurants or retail shops, for instance.)
We found while writing our Forward Funding review that in recent years, this has become less of a set-in-stone rule and now they’ve been opened up to businesses who don’t receive the majority of their profits from debit or credit card sales.
We found while writing our Forward Funding review that there are generally two ways that merchant cash advance repayments are structured.
The ACH withdrawal option has become the most common type of merchant cash advance repayment, according to Sean Murray, who founded deBanked magazine and is a former merchant cash advance broker, himself.
The reason that these have become so popular is that they aren’t directly marketed towards businesses that get the majority of their profit through debit or credit card sales, meaning that other businesses are taking advantage of them.
Rather than making fixed monthly payments on a loan, with a merchant cash advance you make daily or weekly payments, which can be a percentage of your debit or credit card sales or a fixed daily rate, along with fees. You make these payments until the advance is paid off.
We found during research for this Forward Funding review that merchant cash advance fees are determined by how able you are to repay your advance. They use what they call a factor rate to determine your fees which is based off risk assessment.
This factor ranges from 1.2-1.5, with a higher rate meaning that you’ll pay more in fees. You multiply your advance by the factor rate to find your fees.
For instance, if you go an advance of $50,000 and got a factor rate of 1.4, then you’ll have fees of $20,000, making your total repayment $70,000.
If you chose a percentage of credit and debit card sales repayment structure, then your repayment period will typically range from 3 months to a year. The more money you make in credit and debit card sales, the faster you’ll pay off the advance.
Using the example where your repayment is $70,000, if your business makes $100,000 in credit and debit card sales monthly and your percentage of sales payment is 10%, then you’ll pay $333 per day and pay off your advance in seven months.
But we found while writing our Forward Funding review that if your revenue dips, you’re not expected to keep paying $333 per day.
If your revenue were to drop down to $70,000 a day, your 10% payment would be adjusted to $233 per day and you would pay off your advance in 10 months.
Something that we want to point out in our Forward Funding review is that since percentage of sales based repayments are based on your monthly revenue, and your monthly revenue can fluctuate, the amount of time it takes to pay off your loan could be shorter or longer than you’d initially expected.
If you choose the fixed daily withdrawl repayment structure, then a fixed amount will be taken from your bank account daily or weekly, regardless of the fluctuation of your revenue.
So, if your revenue initially starts at $100,000 and you’re making 10% percentage of sales payments, then you’ll either pay $333 per day or $2,331 per week, regardless of how much your sales fluctuate that week.
While it’s nice to be able to get a merchant cash advance whether your profit primarily comes from credit and debit cards or not, once we learned more about the fixed repayment structure for our Forward Funding review, we can’t really recommend it.
One of the biggest questions you probably have is which industries Forward Funding can help. That’s why we’ll let you know about which industries can bet the most benefit from their programs in our Forward Funding review.
One of the most promising things we found while writing this Forward Funding review is that they guarantee that they offer the best rates and will give you the best cost of any company in Canada.
In fact, they’re so confident that they’ll give you the best rates and that you can’t find a better cost that they’ll give you a $200 gift card of your choosing if they don’t beat their competition.
In an attempt to provide you with an unbiased Forward Funding review, we’ll tell you about the drawbacks of Forward Funding, as well. We won’t just give you vague promises about how good their services are, but will instead give you all the information and allow you to make an informed decision for yourself.
Forward Funding is a new Fintech company. It’s so new that there aren’t online reviews about it from big review sites.
But even if there were, many people would steer clear of it until it’s established itself on the market for a while (some people wait until these companies are around for 5 or 10 years, for example).
The fear for these people is that startup companies come and they go, but you don’t want your financial future tied to a company that hasn’t proven that it’s going to stick around because what happens if it does go out of business suddenly?
Another drawback to Forward Funding that we found while writing this Forward Funding review is the fact that there’s not much about the company’s history online. It’s got a decent reputation as far as user reviews go.
But when it comes to finding information about how it was started, when, who owns it, who backs it, or any of the important information that many people want to know when they choose a financial institution, it’s simply not there.
Their “About” section doesn’t even include this information, which is disappointing for anyone writing a review about it, and there aren’t any press releases or articles written about it, so that makes it even more frustrating.
So, if you’re one of those people that want to know more about a company before you use its services, it may be wise to wait a bit on Forward Funding.
Of course, we realize that Forward Funding isn’t for everyone. So, in this portion of our Forward Funding review we’ll tell you about some alternatives to Forward Funding.
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Clearco, which was formerly Clearbanc is a way to get funding that resembles a merchant cash advance. You can get as much as $10,000,000 in advances. The best part is that there’s no set date for you to pay back the loan. We found while reading about Clearbanc as an alternative to Forward Funding for our Forward Funding review that it works exclusively with these industries: eCommerce, SaaS (Software as a Service), subscriptions companies, online retail companies, mobile app businesses with in-app purchases, and marketplace businesses.
You pay back the Clearco loan the same way you would a market cash advance, which is by paying them a percentage of your future credit and debit card sales. The percentage you pay back depends on how much cash flow you have, meaning if you have a high and consistent cash flow, then your percentage is on the higher end, but if it isn’t then your percentage could be as much as 20%.
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The reason we’re listing Fundthrough as a good alternative to Forward Funding in our Forward Funding review is that Fundthrough provides funding to businesses, as well. But the way it goes about it is different. Fundthrough links its software up to business owners’ accounting software and banking information, which allows them to assign business owners with a funding limit in a matter of hours.
Most business owners spend less than 2 minutes working on this application process, so it’s highly streamlined. They also eliminate payment terms so that business owners can focus on things like buying inventory, pay their staff, and take more jobs.
Ledn is a really interesting option that we wanted to include in our Forward Funding review because it allows you to take out a loan backed by Bitcoins.
It allows you to use your bitcoins as collateral for a loan, without requiring you to liquidate it. They use BitGo (a big-name Bitcoin custodian) to store your Bitcoin while it’s being used as collateral.
After you’ve paid your loan off, then your Bitcoin goes back into your account. They provide loan terms of 12 months, but you can apply for loan extensions. There’s a 12% interest rate per year on the loan, as well. There’s a 50% maximum LTV (Loan-to-Value) on your Bitcoin.
After you’re approved for the loan, you’ll receive your funds in under 24 hours. There’s no payment schedule for repayment of the loan, which is nice as well.
Espresso is another company we wanted to list as an alternative in our Forward Funding review that allows businesses to apply for lines of credit, as well as term loans to encourage business growth. They offer term loans of up to 5 years, which is generally ideal.
They work with high-growth technology companies and service customers in the United States, Canada and the UK, so if you fall in any of those categories it may be worth checking out Espresso Capital.
Forward Funding is a new lending company that is just making itself known in the industry. Some of their product offerings that we found while writing this Forward Funding review include term loans and merchant cash advances, much like other lending companies.
But what really makes Forward Funding stand out is that it offers a guarantee that they’ll get you the best rate and that if they can’t beat their competition they’ll give you a $200 gift card of your choosing.
There may not be much information about them on the internet right now, but when we read about their guarantee for our Forward Funding review, it was enough to make us think twice about them.
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Forward Funding is a Canadian Fintech company that’s based in Montreal. They offer a range of financial services, such as merchant cash advances and term loans aimed to help small to medium-sized businesses in Canada. They say on their website that they provide the highest approval rates and the lowest term loan cost in the Fintech industry.
The main services Forward Funding offers is term loans, business finance, and merchant cash advance for small and medium-sized Canadian businesses.
One of the biggest questions you probably have is which industries Forward Funding can help. That’s why we’ll let you know about which industries can bet the most benefit from their programs in our Forward Funding review.
Forward Funding won't charge you upfront for their service of finding you business financing. Forward Funding will receive a commission when you get financing.
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