urgent working capital for convenience stores
specialty funders offer urgent working capital to convenience stores when the calendar collides — a rack price spike on the same day as the lottery settlement, a tobacco invoice due before the cigarettes sell, a compressor down on a saturday. advances run $10K to $500K, and the specialty funders typically decide in 24-72 hours, subject to underwriting. we put the real cost in dollars in front of you before you sign.
- amount
- $10K to $500K
- decision
- 24 to 72 hours
- stacking
- all positions considered
- paperwork
- bank statements + ID
- commission
- paid by the funder, not you
a c-store cash crunch is usually a collision, not a decline
the stores that call us in a hurry are rarely losing money. they got hit by four calendars that do not coordinate with each other. the fuel jobber wants payment on the drop, and rack prices moved 30 cents before the last load finished selling. the lottery settlement sweeps on its own schedule regardless of what the tickets did that week. the tobacco invoice from your distributor is dated on their terms, not on how fast a carton moves. rent hits the first. any three of those in the same seven days empties an account that looked fine on the fifteenth. that is a timing problem wearing the costume of a solvency problem, and the difference matters, because one of them is worth funding and the other is not. banks are the wrong tool for a seven-day window even when they like your store, and many of them screen tobacco, lottery, and fuel exposure before anyone reads a statement. an advance against future receivables is underwritten from your bank statements. our job is to know which specialty funders read convenience files this week, package yours for the two or three most likely to move, and give you a straight answer inside your window — including a no when the answer is no.
what an underwriter actually sees in convenience store statements
a convenience store's bank statement is the hardest file in specialty retail to read correctly, and that is why routing matters more here than in almost any vertical. the account is full of money that was never yours. lottery ticket sales land gross and get swept on the state's settlement calendar. ATM vault replenishment goes out and comes back as surcharge plus principal. fuel settlement can dwarf everything else while contributing almost nothing to profit. an underwriter who does not work this category sees enormous volume, violent swings, and large regular outflows, and either sizes an offer off a number that flatters you or declines the file as churn. underwriters who do work it net the pass-throughs out and size against inside sales, because merchandise and foodservice are where the gross profit lives. beyond that they read the same things they read everywhere: average daily balance, deposit count and consistency, negative days, NSF activity, and the direction of the trend. we label the lottery sweeps, the vault loads, and the fuel settlements in the submission so the funder is reading your store rather than reverse-engineering it.
a realistic timeline from application to funding
here is how the clock usually runs. day one: you send the one-page application and your last 3 months of business bank statements, we read them the same day and submit to the funders we think fit. offers typically come back in 24-48 hours. after you accept, the funder verifies — a short call, a bank connection or statement refresh, and on convenience files sometimes a check that your tobacco retail license, lottery retailer number, or beer license is current and in the same entity name as the application. funding typically lands within 24-72 hours of a signed agreement. what slows these files specifically: statement pages missing from a month that happened to include the biggest fuel settlement, an entity mismatch because the store was bought under a new LLC and one license never got transferred, a lapsed tobacco license, or an existing advance that turns up in review instead of in the cover note. tell us the mess on day one. a disclosed problem is underwriting; a discovered one is a decline, and on a seven-day window a decline on thursday is the same as no.
what urgent funding costs, honestly
speed carries a price and we are not going to pretend otherwise. advances written on short timelines usually run shorter terms and higher factor rates than deals a merchant shops over a month. factor rates vary by funder and by file strength, and we do not publish numbers because your quote depends on underwriting and specific terms arrive with formal disclosures at the offer stage. what we do instead is arithmetic you can check. we put the total payback in dollars next to the amount you receive, show the daily or weekly payment, and run it against your worst week rather than your average one. there is a convenience-specific test we apply. the payment comes out of daily settlements, and your daily settlements already carry a fuel float and a lottery sweep with no flexibility in them. a payment that looks comfortable against monthly deposits can be brutal against the tuesday after a settlement, when the account is at its thinnest. if the number fails that test, the advance makes your problem worse on a delay, and we would rather lose the deal than place one that breaks in eight weeks.
when we tell you to wait
some urgent convenience files should not be funded, and a broker who funds everything is not on your side. if the pressure is a fuel margin problem rather than a timing problem — you are matching a competitor's street price below your own cost of goods to protect gallons — an advance funds the loss instead of stopping it, and the payment outlives the price war. if inside sales have slid for five straight months while gallons held, the store has a traffic problem that capital does not solve. if you already carry positions eating a meaningful slice of daily settlements, adding another under deadline pressure is how single-store operators end up in a stack they cannot service. in those cases we would rather decline you today and look again in two months when a statement cycle reads differently. sometimes the honest move is 30 days of tighter buying, a real conversation with your distributor about terms, resetting street price to your actual cost, and clearing the slow-moving backbar. then an advance from a stronger file at a better cost. we are here for that call too.
frequently asked questions
how fast can i actually get funded?
typical range is 24-72 hours from a complete application to money in the account, subject to underwriting and verification. same-week is normal when statements are clean and you answer the verification call quickly. anyone promising same-day every time is selling. send complete statement PDFs rather than screenshots or a POS export — the most common delay we see on convenience files is a missing page from the month with the largest fuel settlement on it.
what documents do you need to start?
your last 3 months of business bank statements, a one-page application, and a driver's license. that is the whole initial file for most deals. at the offer stage some funders ask for a voided check, your lease or fuel supply agreement, or a copy of your tobacco retail license. no business plan and no tax returns for most deals under $150K. if you can pull statements tonight we can usually submit in the morning.
my statements show huge deposits from fuel and lottery. does that help or hurt?
neither, if the file is routed correctly. gross deposits inflated by fuel settlement, lottery volume, and ATM vault cycling do not represent profit, and funders who work convenience retail net them out before sizing anything. the danger is a funder who does not know the category reading the swings as instability. we annotate those lines in the submission so the offer is sized against inside sales — merchandise and foodservice — which is what actually services a payment.
will applying hurt my credit?
most specialty funders run a soft credit pull at application, which does not affect your score. some run a hard pull at final approval, and we tell you before that happens. on convenience files credit matters less than account behavior — deposit consistency, negative days, and existing obligations carry most of the decision. what does quietly cost you is scattering applications, because a widely shopped file gets harder to place.
is this a loan?
no. a merchant cash advance is a purchase of future receivables rather than a loan — a funder buys a slice of your future revenue at a discount and you remit it as a daily or weekly payment. people search for convenience store loans and land here, which is fine, but the distinction matters legally and it changes how the product is disclosed, priced, and underwritten. if a bank or SBA-backed loan is realistic for your store, we will say so.
ready to talk it through?
three months of bank statements and an ID. we'll tell you honestly whether funding fits your situation — and which funders would look at your file.
related situations
check what you qualify for
four questions, no contact details, instant answer. nothing here is an offer — it is an estimate based on the published minimums at the funders we work with.
see what your shop qualifies for.
takes about 30 seconds. no credit pull, no documents yet — we just need a way to reach you.