The continuing consolidation of the US banking industry has resulted in fewer but larger banks. The small community based bank where the local bank president is active in neighborhood affairs, and even on a first name basis with many of the local merchants, is practically extinct. Today, merchants trying to establish a credit relationship with the local branch of “Mega Bank” are usually met with a series of well meaning non decision making functionaries who are able merely to parrot bland corporate credit nostrums, but provide no money, even for worthy projects. A lot of time can be spent identifying a local banker potentially willing, and perhaps even able, to supply credit to a local merchant; time, that unfortunately, in many cases, is totally wasted.

Merchants lucky enough to find a potential lender willing to even talk must then teach the banker all the intricacies of the merchant’s business, its prospects and supply voluminous documentation and detail the intended use of funds. In addition to all the documentation, personal guarantees and even security in the merchant’s own home or other property are almost always required to obtain business credit. Assuming that the merchant is able to satisfy the lender’s documentation and security requests, which in and of themselves do no guarantee that funds will be forthcoming, the local banker will then have to make a credit request, on behalf of the merchant, to a distant decision maker. Time and effort are spent gathering, organizing and delivering the documents, and then more time is spent waiting for a decision from an unknown person who may request even more information further delaying the receipt of necessary funds. In short, months of work can be spent supplying documents and schmoozing, to create a source of funding, and of course, there are no guarantees that all that effort will pay off.

Today there is a better, easy, reliable, convenient and fast way to obtain secure lines of business credit for merchants. Any vendor or merchant today who accepts credit cards can easily get credit from Credit Card Advance (www.creditcardadvance.net) also known as CCA. All the merchant needs to do is fill out the simple online application and supply its most recent 4 months reports from it credit card processor. Within a maximum of 3 business days approval for any amount from $1,000 up to $150,000, depending on the dollar value of credit card transactions, will become available. The merchant and CCA then agree to a fixed dollar amount that the merchant repays over 3 to 10 months. Documents are signed, and the money is electronically transferred into the merchant’s bank account. From start to finish the total elapsed time from first contact to funding can be less than a week.

In addition to the speed and ease obtaining the credit advance, the funds are very easily repaid too. CCA is able, with the agreement of the merchant and the cooperation of a major credit card processor, to split off a small portion of the merchant’s credit card receipts until the fixed dollar amount agreed upon is paid to CCA, after which the merchant receives all its receipts from the processor as usual. In this case the merchant must agree to switch credit card processors to the one CCA works with. CCA guarantees that the processor fee is at least as good a rate as the merchant presently pays now. This method of repayment makes it easy and painless, it just happens automatically.

If the merchant is happy with its current processor and does not want to switch processors CCA is still able to advance funds without the merchant switching processors. The merchant merely must agree to let CCA electronically withdraw funds from the merchant’s bank account. The frequency of the withdrawals is usually once or twice a week and the agreed upon amounts withdrawn are designed to be small enough so that the merchant can easily tolerate the slightly lower average bank balance. This method does however have the risk that the merchant’s bank account could become overdrawn if the merchant does not plan for the withdrawals by CCA. Most merchants prefer that the repayments are automatically sent by the processor to CCA.

Another benefit to this type of funding is that the second, or any subsequent funding requirement, can be completed in about half the time as the first funding, assuming that the first advance was repaid in full in accordance with all the agreements. These are easy lines of credit to establish and easy to maintain, even for years. Regular seasonal capital needs can be filled almost automatically without any disruption to a merchants already too busy schedule. The vast majority of the millions of new jobs created in the US in the last 15 years were created by the hundreds of thousands of small merchants and entrepreneurs that have fueled America’s economic growth. It is a travesty that the main stream banking industry has walked away from these small and medium sized businesses. Innovative providers of capital, like CCA, have stepped in to lend a hand and help make merchants business grow and prosper while saving time and headaches.

Author: George Skakel