Merchant Cash Advance Laws for 2027

Going into 2027, merchant cash advance law is mostly state law. At least eleven states now require funders to disclose the cost of many advances before you sign, California and New York also require an estimated annual percentage rate, Texas bans confession-of-judgment clauses and limits automatic debits, Vermont’s licensing law starts July 1, 2027, and California’s starts in 2028. If you already signed and the debits are wearing you down, the question is what any of it does for you.

Picture an owner like Ray Delgado, who runs a commercial landscaping company outside San Antonio with eleven employees and four trucks. In March 2026 he took a $90,000 advance to cover new mowers and a slow winter. In August, with the first one still collecting, a broker found him a second advance for $40,000. Between the two, about $1,450 leaves his operating account every business day, and that is before payroll, fuel and the insurance renewal that lands every January.

Ray is a composite, but his question is the right one to ask before the calendar turns: “Somebody told me Texas passed a law about these things. Does it help me?” The short answer: it may help some, but probably not the way you hope. The Texas law took effect September 1, 2025 and changed how funders and brokers must register, disclose and collect. It did not cap what an advance costs, and it did not give Ray a way to sue anybody under it.

So here is the plan. For each rule that matters going into 2027, I’ll say what it makes a funder or broker do, and what you, the owner, can do with it. I’m not a lawyer, Hamilton & Merchant is not a law firm, and none of this is legal advice. Where a step needs a lawyer, I mean your own, licensed in your state, reading your actual contract.

What laws cover merchant cash advances going into 2027?

Three layers of law apply. State commercial financing laws set disclosure, registration and contract rules in the states that have them; federal law, mainly the FTC Act and the Telemarketing Sales Rule, forbids deception; and court decisions decide, contract by contract, how a given advance is treated. Each layer does a different job, and none of them puts a price ceiling on a typical advance today.

Let me cut to the chase with the timeline. Virginia’s law reached contracts signed from July 1, 2022, California’s disclosure rules became operative December 9, 2022, Utah began registering providers January 1, 2023, and New York required compliance from August 1, 2023. Seven more states followed between January 2024 and September 2025, Texas last. Vermont is next, on July 1, 2027.

The federal layer is thinner than you might expect. There is no federal disclosure law for business financing like the one consumers get with a car loan. What exists is enforcement: the Federal Trade Commission can bring cases over deception and unfair practices, and since May 16, 2024, its telemarketing rule reaches false statements made on business-to-business sales calls.

The court layer is where the hardest questions get answered. Advances are sold as a purchase of future receivables, and when a dispute reaches court, judges look at the actual terms of each contract to decide how to treat it. If you want every state in one table with citations, Hamilton & Merchant Research keeps it in the study of state commercial financing and MCA laws; this post is the plain-English companion.

Which states require merchant cash advance disclosures?

As of October 2026, eleven states have laws in force that require a written cost disclosure on many advances: California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, New York, Texas, Utah and Virginia. Vermont joins on July 1, 2027. Most of these laws stop at a dollar ceiling, so a large advance can fall outside them entirely.

The ceilings matter more than owners think. California, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Missouri and Virginia stop at $500,000. Connecticut stops at $250,000. Utah reaches $1,000,000, Texas covers offers under $1 million, New York reaches $2.5 million, and Louisiana’s law sets no dollar limit at all. If you took a $600,000 advance in Florida, the Florida disclosure law does not reach it.

There is a second catch: low-volume exemptions. Florida, Georgia, Kansas, New York and Utah exempt a provider that does no more than five commercial financing transactions in the state in a year. Texas wrote its law without that exemption.

Read the table twice and two patterns show up. First, only California and New York, and Vermont from July 2027, make the funder print an annual percentage rate. The other states require the total dollar cost and the payment schedule, which is useful, but it leaves the annualizing to you. Second, registration is the exception, not the rule. Utah, Virginia, Connecticut and Texas make providers register, Missouri’s registration applies to brokers, and Florida, Georgia and Kansas register nobody at all.

Dates matter as much as states. Florida’s law applies to transactions consummated on or after January 1, 2024, so a Florida advance signed in December 2023 gets nothing from it. Write the signing date next to each contract before you look up a single rule. For more on how the states differ, see how states differ.

What does a merchant cash advance disclosure have to show?

A disclosure has to show what you get, what you pay back, the difference between the two, and how the payments come out of your account. In California and New York it also shows an estimated annual percentage rate and an estimated term, the funder’s best guess at how long collection will take. It has to reach you before the deal is done: at or before consummation in Florida, at or before the specific offer in Texas.

New York’s list is the most complete, so it makes a good checklist. For sales-based financing, the New York disclosure must show:

• The total amount of the financing and the disbursement amount, meaning what actually lands in your account after any fees are taken out.
• The finance charge, the full cost of the money in dollars.
• The estimated annual percentage rate, calculated under the federal Truth in Lending rules known as Regulation Z.
• The total repayment amount, which is the disbursement amount plus the finance charge.
• The estimated term, the time it should take your payments to add up to the total repayment amount.
• The payment amounts, based on projected sales volume.
• Other fees not in the finance charge, such as late fees or returned-payment fees.
• What you would owe in added charges if you paid off or refinanced early.
• Any collateral requirements or security interests.

California’s sales-based financing form carries the same core items, and it explains the APR to you in one line: the estimated cost of your financing expressed as a yearly rate. Since January 1, 2026, a California provider that quotes a charge, a pricing metric or a financing amount after making a specific offer must also state the APR, and it may not use the words “interest” or “rate” in a misleading way. The point is simple: a factor rate of 1.4 sounds small, and the same deal stated as a yearly rate usually doesn’t.

Florida’s list is shorter: funds provided, total to be paid, total dollar cost, the payment schedule, and whether paying early carries costs or discounts. Georgia and Kansas track Florida closely.

Take a round, made-up example to see why the APR line matters. Say the contract funds $50,000, the funder keeps $2,500 in fees, so $47,500 reaches your bank, and you owe $70,000 back in 120 business-day payments. The daily payment is about $583. The finance charge is $22,500, the gap between what you repay and what you actually received. Spread over roughly 24 weeks, that works out to an estimated APR somewhere around 172 to 179 percent, depending on how many business days you count in a year. A Florida disclosure would show you the $22,500. A New York or California disclosure would also show you the yearly rate.

If your number is far from the APR printed on your disclosure, don’t assume someone cheated. Estimates rest on assumed sales, and they drift when sales change. Write down both numbers and ask the funder in writing how it got its figure. For the full arithmetic, see what an MCA costs when you do the math.

To check your own contract, try the disclosure check below with the numbers from your agreement or disclosure.

What changed in Texas in 2025 and 2026?

Texas went from having no merchant cash advance statute to one of the most detailed in the country in about a year. HB 700 took effect September 1, 2025; the Office of Consumer Credit Commissioner’s rules took effect July 9, 2026; and every provider and broker already in business in Texas must register by December 31, 2026, then renew by January 31 each year.

Here is what the new Finance Code chapter 398 makes funders and brokers do:

• Give a written disclosure for specific offers under $1 million, showing the disbursement amount, the finance charge, the total repayment amount, payment amounts and frequency, prepayment costs, collateral and any compensation paid to a broker.
• Register with the Office of Consumer Credit Commissioner. Under the adopted rules, the fee is $1,000 for the initial registration and $1,000 for each annual renewal.
• Leave confessions of judgment out. Under section 398.055, a covered contract that contains a confession of judgment provision “or any similar provision” is void and unenforceable.
• Limit automatic debits. Under section 398.056, a provider or broker may not set up automatic debiting of your deposit account unless it holds a validly perfected security interest in that account with first priority over everyone else’s claims.

Now the part that surprises owners. The statute says the Finance Commission may not adopt a maximum annual percentage rate, finance charge or fee for these deals. It also says the chapter does not create a private right of action, which means you can’t sue a funder under this chapter just because it broke it. Enforcement belongs to the state.

So what does Ray get out of it? Three practical things. He can ask each funder and broker for proof of Texas registration once the December 31 deadline passes. He can read both contracts for a confession of judgment, knowing Texas law speaks directly to covered contracts that include one, and hand anything he finds to a Texas lawyer. And because both funders debit his account automatically, he has a precise question for that lawyer: does each funder hold the kind of security interest section 398.056 requires? Don’t count your chickens on any of the three, though. They are questions with paperwork behind them, not refunds.

Do merchant cash advance brokers have to register?

In some states they do. Brokers must register in Virginia, Connecticut, Missouri and Texas, and California will require a broker license from July 1, 2028. Florida, Georgia and Kansas don’t register brokers, but they forbid brokers from charging advance fees or making false or misleading statements. In most other states, broker rules are thin.

Why should an owner care who registered? Because the broker is often the person who put you in the first advance, and sometimes the one who suggests the second and third. Registration means a regulator knows who they are and where to find them. Missouri also makes brokers carry a $10,000 surety bond, and Virginia and Texas make the funder disclose whether it pays the broker, and how much, so you can see the commission that rode along with your deal.

California’s 2026 law adds something new. From 2028, licensed brokers will have to post on their websites the average and maximum APRs of the deals they arranged the year before. That is a public scoreboard, and I expect owners and their accountants to use it before they sign anything.

Registration is not a seal of approval, so treat it as the first question, not the last. For how brokers are paid and how that pay shapes the offer you see, read how MCA brokers are paid.

Can a funder still use a confession of judgment in 2027?

It depends on where you are and where the funder would file. A confession of judgment is a signed statement, usually part of the contract package, that lets a creditor get a court judgment without first winning a lawsuit. Since 2019, New York accepts one only in the county where the defendant is located, California stopped enforcing them in 2023, and Virginia and Texas bar them from covered contracts.

Here is the state of play going into 2027:

• New York. Since August 30, 2019, CPLR 3218 lets a confession be filed only with the clerk of the county where the defendant said it lived when it signed, or where it lives when the creditor files; a business “resides” wherever it has a place of business. The bill’s sponsor wrote that it was aimed at out-of-state small business owners with no connection to New York.
• California. Code of Civil Procedure section 1132 says a judgment by confession is unenforceable and may not be entered in any California superior court, except one obtained or entered before January 1, 2023. AB 2116 adds, from 2028, a rule that providers and brokers may not even take a confession of judgment or power of attorney up front.
• Florida. Section 55.05 of the Florida Statutes says a power of attorney to confess judgment, given before a lawsuit is brought, is “absolutely null and void.”
• Virginia. No sales-based financing contract may contain a confession of judgment or any similar provision, for contracts signed from July 1, 2022.
• Texas. Since September 1, 2025, Texas law says a covered contract that contains one, or any similar provision, is void and unenforceable.
• Vermont. From July 1, 2027, covered commercial financing contracts may not contain one.

Here’s the catch. These laws narrow the doors; they don’t close every one. Each rule has its own scope, its own start date and its own definition of a covered deal, and where a creditor files can matter as much as where you live. If you signed one, find it, read it, and give it to your lawyer early rather than late. Our longer guide explains how they work in practice: confessions of judgment and MCAs.

What do Florida’s laws mean for an owner in 2027?

Florida gives owners a disclosure right but not a private lawsuit to enforce it. The Florida Commercial Financing Disclosure Law covers advances of $500,000 or less consummated on or after January 1, 2024, and only the Attorney General can enforce it. The statute also says a violation does not affect whether the underlying deal can be enforced.

That last sentence is in the law itself, and it is worth reading twice. If your Florida funder skipped the disclosure, that is a complaint for the Attorney General’s office, which can fine $500 per incident up to $20,000, and $1,000 per incident up to $50,000 after a written notice of a prior violation. It is a real tool for the state. It is not a defense you can count on in a collection case.

Florida’s broker rules carry more practical weight. A broker may not collect or ask for an advance fee, may not make false or misleading statements or leave out material facts when selling its services, and may not advertise without giving its real address and phone number. If a broker’s promises didn’t match the contract, write down what was said and when.

Then there is section 55.05, the older Florida rule on powers of attorney to confess judgment, covered in the chapter above. Hamilton & Merchant’s office is in Orlando, so we keep a full page on the rest of the state’s rules: Florida business debt laws.

What has the FTC done about merchant cash advance practices?

The Federal Trade Commission has brought cases against specific companies for deception and unfair collection, and it has won industry bans and money for refunds. It does not set prices or rewrite contracts. Its cases show which practices federal enforcers treat as out of bounds.

Four public actions frame the federal picture going into 2027:

• April 2021. An advance company and its executives agreed to surrender $9,837,000 for refunds. The FTC alleged the company kept withdrawing money from businesses’ bank accounts for days after their balances had been repaid, and misled them about how much funding they would actually receive. The order bars withdrawals without express informed consent.
• June 2022. In a separate case, a company and its owner were permanently banned from business financing and debt collection, had to provide more than $2.7 million for refunds, and had to vacate judgments against former customers and release liens on their property.
• February 2024. In that same case, a court entered a $20.3 million judgment against a remaining defendant, $3,421,067 in redress plus $16,956,000 in civil penalties, after an October 2023 order banning him from the merchant cash advance and debt collection industries. The FTC alleged contracts required businesses and owners to accept confessed judgments that were then used to seize assets.
• October 2025. A court entered a final order permanently banning a small-business financing company and its CEO from offering business financing, debt relief and credit repair, with a $48,280,328 judgment suspended in part. The court found violations of the FTC Act and the Telemarketing Sales Rule.

The October 2025 case deserves a second look if you are shopping for help right now. The FTC said that company told owners they would pay nothing up front and then charged large fees when they tried to cancel, and the order bans it from debt relief services too. Get every fee in writing before you agree to anything.

These cases don’t pay you anything directly, but they show what a federal agency already treats as unfair, so you know what to write down and report. Hamilton & Merchant Research lists the federal and state actions in its study of enforcement actions.

Does the Telemarketing Sales Rule protect a business owner?

Partly, and more than it used to. Since May 16, 2024, the FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rule prohibits material misrepresentations and false or misleading statements in business-to-business telemarketing calls, as it already did for calls to consumers. A broker or funder who misstates the terms of an advance on a sales call is now inside the rule.

The 2024 amendments extended the rule’s misrepresentation provisions to business calls; they did not make every consumer protection in the rule apply to businesses. The rule also covers anyone who calls your business selling debt relief; the court in the October 2025 case above found violations of it.

My practical rule: never take a sales call about money without a notepad. The date, the name, the number and the promise, in your own handwriting, is worth more than any recollection six months later.

Does the CFPB small business lending rule cover merchant cash advances?

No. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s revised small business lending rule, published May 1, 2026 and effective June 30, 2026, excludes merchant cash advances, agricultural lending and small dollar loans from the transactions lenders must report. Compliance starts January 1, 2028.

The rule comes from Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act, which requires lenders to collect and report data on credit to small businesses. The 2023 version covered advances. The 2026 revision dropped them, narrowed the definition of a small business from $5 million or less in gross annual revenue to $1 million or less, and raised the reporting threshold to lenders with 1,000 covered transactions in each of two consecutive years, up from 100.

Hold your horses before you read that as good news or bad news for you. It changes nothing in your contract and nothing about how a funder may collect. What it changes is public information: advances stay out of the federal small business lending data, so there will be no federal dataset on them to compare your deal against, so the state disclosures remain the best price information an owner will see.

Is a merchant cash advance a loan under the law?

It depends on the contract, and courts don’t all agree. A merchant cash advance is sold as a purchase of future receivables, and when a dispute reaches court, judges look past the label to the actual terms and to how the deal worked in practice. In New York, appellate courts usually weigh three factors to decide whether repayment is absolute or depends on your sales.

1. Is there a reconciliation provision, a real way to adjust the payments to your actual receipts?
2. Does the agreement have a finite term?
3. Does the funder have recourse if the business declares bankruptcy?

The idea behind the test goes back at least to a 2017 federal decision in New York, which said there can be no usury unless the money advanced is repayable absolutely, and found that the funder’s right to collect depended on the merchant continuing to collect receipts. Each factor tests whether the funder really took the risk that your sales would fall.

Three New York appellate decisions from 2026 show how much the answer depends on the facts:

• February 19, 2026. In a case brought by the New York Attorney General over more than 3,000 transactions, the Appellate Division, First Department, held that the agreements, although styled as merchant cash advances, were properly characterized as loans subject to usury limits. The contracts required reconciliation on paper, but the court found none was performed in practice. It vacated the $77,289,631 money judgment and sent the amount back to be recalculated.
• February 26, 2026. The same court, in a different case, applied the same three factors and found an issue of fact on how to characterize the agreements, so neither side won without more proceedings.
• July 24, 2026. The Fourth Department found a reconciliation provision, no fixed term, and a clause saying bankruptcy alone is not a breach, and it rejected the argument that the agreement was a usurious loan. Two justices dissented.

The label on page one of your contract starts the argument; the way the money actually moved is what finishes it.

So when someone tells you flatly that every advance is a loan, or that none is, that dog won’t hunt. The question is answered one contract at a time, usually by a judge, after a good deal of legal expense. Hamilton & Merchant Research tracks the decisions in its study of court decisions on MCAs. If your contract has a reconciliation clause, the reconciliation right in MCA contracts explains how to use it as written.

What is scheduled or pending for 2027?

Two laws are scheduled and several bills are pending or stalled. Vermont’s licensing and disclosure law takes effect July 1, 2027, and California’s licensing law, signed September 30, 2026, takes effect in 2028. Two New York bills were still in committee when I checked on October 23, 2026, a New Jersey bill was last reported pending in March 2026, and 2025–2026 bills in Connecticut, Maryland and California did not become law.

Scheduled

• Vermont, July 1, 2027. H.648, signed June 16, 2026 as Act 142, requires a license, an annual percentage rate disclosure, no confessions of judgment, and no automatic debits unless the provider holds a validly perfected first-priority security interest in the account. It does not apply to financing of $1,000,000 or more. Have your lawyer read the enacted text before you rely on any of these details.
• California, 2028. AB 2116, Chapter 823 of the Statutes of 2026, brings small-business commercial financing of $500,000 or less, including merchant cash advances, under the California Financing Law. Most provisions start January 1, 2028 and the license requirement July 1, 2028. Providers and brokers may not take a confession of judgment or power of attorney up front, may not bar you from talking about their terms, and face license action for repeatedly ignoring your ability to repay. Deals made from 2028 by a provider that is neither licensed nor waiting on a complete license application can become unenforceable.

Pending or stalled, as of October 23, 2026

• New York S1726, which its sponsor calls the End Loan Sharking Act, would extend usury limits to “financing arrangements” and names merchant cash advances. Pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee since January 7, 2026.
• New York S10127 would extend the state’s interest rate caps and criminal usury law to “covered services,” including merchant cash advances. Referred to Senate Judiciary on April 30, 2026. Pending.
• New Jersey S1760 would impose disclosure rules across financing products, with civil penalties up to $10,000 for willful violations and an exemption for deals over $500,000. Pending as of March 2026.
• Connecticut HB 5211 would have required estimated APR disclosures. It passed the House on April 27, 2026; the last Senate action was May 6, 2026. Not law.
• Maryland HB 1007, the Commercial Financing Small Business Truth in Lending Act, shows a March House hearing as its last action. Not law.
• California AB 1166 would have extended the state’s Fair Debt Settlement Practices Act to commercial financing recipients. It was held in Senate Appropriations on August 29, 2025. Not law.

That last bill concerns the kind of company you might call for help: it would have stretched California’s consumer debt settlement protections to businesses. Watch for a 2027 version. Until then, vetting a business debt relief company yourself matters. If the creek don’t rise, I’ll be watching Albany and Sacramento in January along with you.

What don’t these laws do?

They don’t cap the price of a typical advance, most of them don’t let you sue, and they don’t undo a contract you already signed. That is the hardest part of this briefing to hear, and it is better heard now than in a courtroom.

On price, Texas wrote into its statute that its Finance Commission may not set a maximum APR, finance charge or fee. On lawsuits, Florida, Georgia, Kansas and Texas each say their laws create no private right of action. On enforceability, Florida, Georgia and Kansas say a violation does not affect the validity of the underlying deal. And on timing, these laws reach deals signed after their start dates.

A disclosure law is a flashlight: it shows you the price before you pay it, and it was never built to hand the money back.

None of that makes the laws useless. A disclosure in hand before you sign is the cheapest protection there is, and a complaint to a regulator can reach a funder or broker that ignores the rules. Virginia goes further than most, making a contract provision that violates its chapter unenforceable against you. Use the laws for what they do, and don’t build a plan on what they don’t.

Which state’s law applies when the funder is in another state?

Often the law of the state where you are matters, even if the funder is somewhere else. Several of these statutes are written around the recipient: Texas covers offers to a recipient in Texas, and California covers a person presented an offer by a provider. But contracts also pick a governing law and a place to resolve disputes, and how those clauses interact with your state’s rules is a question for a lawyer.

Virginia shows how far a state can go: suits on a covered contract must be brought in a Virginia court, and the contract can’t require face-to-face arbitration outside the recipient’s home state. For your own contracts, find the governing-law clause, the venue clause and any arbitration clause, flag each page, and match them against the table above. If a funder files suit, those clauses shape where you will be standing; the first 30 days after a funder sues covers what to do if papers arrive.

How can you use these laws with your own contract?

Start with the paperwork, then match each contract to the law that was in force when you signed it. Most of the value comes from three checks: the disclosure against the contract, the clauses your state now restricts, and the registrations your state requires. A lawyer licensed in your state should review anything you find before you act on it.

1. Gather every contract, addendum, disclosure and personal guarantee, one folder per advance, with the signing date written on the front.
2. Note your state and the amount of each advance, and check the table above. Ask two questions: was the deal under the threshold, and was it signed after the start date?
3. Set the disclosure next to the contract. Do the amount funded, the fees, the total payback and the payment schedule match? Run the numbers through the MCA cost calculator and compare the yearly cost with any APR printed on the disclosure.
4. Look for a confession of judgment, a power of attorney, and the clause that authorizes automatic debits. In Texas, Virginia, California and, from July 2027, Vermont, those clauses meet specific rules.
5. Check registrations where your state requires them: Utah, Virginia, Connecticut and Texas for providers; Missouri, Virginia, Connecticut and Texas for brokers. Ask each company in writing for its registration if you can’t find it.
6. Write down what you were told on sales calls, with dates. The telemarketing rule and the Florida, Georgia and Kansas broker rules all turn on what was said.
7. If your contract has a reconciliation clause and your sales have dropped, follow its steps exactly, in writing, with the bank statements it asks for.
8. Take the folder to a lawyer licensed in your state, and if something looks like a violation, ask whether a complaint to the regulator makes sense: the Attorney General in Florida, Georgia and Kansas, or the Office of Consumer Credit Commissioner in Texas.

The contract clauses that matter walks through a contract in order, and if you aren’t sure what you still owe, figuring out what you actually owe shows the arithmetic.

Where does a structured settlement fit with these laws?

The laws in this briefing shape contracts; they don’t shrink a debt that has grown too heavy for the business. When the daily debits outrun what the business can carry, owners generally weigh three paths: working out new terms with the funders, a structured settlement, or bankruptcy with a lawyer. The three paths compared lays them side by side.

Be clear-eyed about what a settlement program involves. In a settlement program, the regular payments usually stop while each funder is negotiated, and that puts the advances in default. That carries real risks: a lawsuit, added fees, damage to your credit, and a claim on any personal guarantee behind the advances. Some funders agree to a settlement and some don’t, and results vary. If you signed a personal guarantee, read what a personal guarantee means before you decide anything.

The laws above still matter inside that decision. A confession of judgment your state no longer enforces, a disclosure that doesn’t match the contract, or a broker who wasn’t registered are all facts your own lawyer will want to know before advising you. Bring them up early.

When to get help with merchant cash advance debt in 2027

Get outside help when the advances are deciding what happens in your business instead of you. That usually shows up as a short list of signs, and one of them is enough to start a conversation. The earlier you talk to someone, the more choices you still have.

Signs it is time

• You took one advance to make the payments on another, or a broker is offering to “consolidate” by adding a new one.
• After the daily or weekly debits, the account can’t cover payroll, sales tax or rent without juggling. If payroll is already short, read what to do when payroll is short first.
• You can’t say, within a few thousand dollars, what you still owe on each advance.
• A demand letter, a notice that you broke the contract, a letter to one of your customers, or court papers has arrived. Court papers carry deadlines, so call a lawyer the same day.
• You signed a personal guarantee, and your house or savings are what stand behind it.
• You’re lying awake running the same numbers over and over.

What a first conversation covers

A useful first conversation is short and specific. It should cover which advances you have, which state laws may apply to each one, what you still owe, what the realistic options are, and what each option costs and risks. It should also tell you plainly whether you need a lawyer, a settlement company or a CPA, and in what order. Hamilton & Merchant offers that conversation free and confidential; we don’t negotiate with funders, and we’re not a law firm. How a first conversation works describes it, and if you’re weighing a lawyer against a settlement company, see lawyer or debt relief company.

What to bring

• Every contract and addendum, plus any disclosures and personal guarantees.
• The last three months of business bank statements.
• A list of every advance with the funder’s name, the amount funded, the payback, the signing date, and its daily or weekly debit.
• Any letters, emails, notices or court papers from funders, brokers or lawyers.

If you want a quick read before you talk to anyone, the free MCA diagnostic asks a few questions and gives you a plain picture of where you stand.

• Do this

  • Get every fee, and when it is charged, in writing before you sign.
  • Ask who will actually do the work, and whether a lawyer is involved.
  • Answer every lawsuit on time, with a lawyer.
  • Check the company’s registrations and complaint history yourself.

• Never do this

  • Hire anyone who promises a result, a percentage or a finish date.
  • Pay anyone who wants money before any work is done.
  • Follow advice to ignore a lawsuit or a court date.
  • Sign the same day under pressure.

When you’re ready, call Hamilton & Merchant for a free, confidential first conversation at (407) 993-1416, or send a note through the contact page. Bring the folder. We’ll help you understand where you stand and what kind of help fits.

What to do before January 2027

Ten weeks is enough time to get your ducks in a row, if you start this week. Here is the order I’d work in.

1. This week, build one folder per advance: contract, addenda, disclosure, guarantee, and the signing date on the front.
2. Make the one-page list of every advance with its daily or weekly debit, and add them up into a monthly figure.
3. Match each advance to the state table above: threshold, start date, and whether a disclosure was required.
4. Run each one through the disclosure check or the cost calculator, and write the yearly cost next to the advance on your list.
5. Flag any confession of judgment, power of attorney or automatic-debit clause for a lawyer licensed in your state.
6. If you are in Texas, ask each funder and broker in January for its Office of Consumer Credit Commissioner registration, since the deadline is December 31, 2026.
7. Build your 2027 budget with the debits in it, not beside it; a 2027 business budget with MCA debt shows how.
8. Before you sign any new advance, ask for the disclosure your state requires and read it overnight.
9. If any of the signs in the chapter above fit, take the diagnostic or book a first conversation before the new year, not after the next notice.

Ray’s version of this list took him one Saturday morning and a pot of coffee. At the end he knew what he owed, which laws touched each contract, and which three questions to put to a Texas lawyer. The laws didn’t change his balance. Knowing them changed his next decision. The ball’s in your court.

Questions and answers