Ecommerce business loans

Which loans work best for ecommerce?

Revenue based financing works best for ad spend and inventory for a brand with steady monthly sales, because repayment flexes with revenue and approval runs off platform data. Inventory financing and purchase order financing work best when a supplier needs a deposit before a large production run. A line of credit works best once you have a year of history and want the cheapest reusable option.

• Revenue based: 6% to 12% of monthly sales remitted until a fixed fee is repaid, factor rates of 1.06 to 1.2 for short payback.
• Inventory: 50% to 80% of landed cost, 8% to 30% APR.
• Line of credit: $10,000 to $500,000, 10% to 40% APR online.

The sales platforms also offer their own advances, which are convenient but not always the cheapest offer you can get.

What do lenders like and dislike about ecommerce?

Lenders like sales they can verify by connecting to the platform, gross margins above 50%, a growing month over month trend, repeat customers, and a brand that sells on more than one channel. They like a founder who can show ad spend and the revenue it produced side by side.

They dislike dependence on one platform account that could be suspended, high return and chargeback rates, a single hero product, and sales that spike in the fourth quarter and fade. Inventory in a third party warehouse is weak collateral, and ad spend that stops working is the most common way an ecommerce brand runs out of cash.

How much can an ecommerce business borrow?

Revenue based lenders typically offer 5% to 20% of trailing twelve month sales, so a brand doing $1.2 million a year usually sees offers of $60,000 to $240,000. Inventory lenders fund 50% to 80% of the landed cost of a confirmed purchase order. Online lines of credit usually top out at one to two months of sales. Banks, once they engage, size loans by profit after ad spend, which is often smaller than founders expect. Larger brands with $5 million or more in sales can reach seven figures through asset based lending on inventory and receivables. The how much can I borrow tool gives a range.

What documents will you be asked for?

Most ecommerce lenders ask you to connect accounts rather than upload files, with read only access to:

• Your store platform (Shopify, Amazon Seller Central, WooCommerce or similar) for 12 months of sales, returns and refunds
• Your payment processors for payout history
• Your business bank account for 6 to 12 months of statements
• Your ad accounts to see spend against sales

Inventory and purchase order lenders add supplier invoices, the purchase order, landed cost estimates and sell through history by SKU. Banks and SBA lenders want two years of tax returns, financial statements and a balance sheet showing inventory at cost. The document checklist has the full set.

What are the common uses of funds?

Ecommerce money usually goes to one of these.

• Inventory ahead of the fourth quarter: a $150,000 inventory loan in August against a confirmed production run, repaid from December sales.
• Ad spend: $60,000 of revenue based financing to scale a campaign with a known payback, repaid as a share of sales.
• A supplier deposit: purchase order financing for the 30% deposit a factory wants before it starts.
• A new product launch: a line draw for tooling, packaging and first stock.
• Hiring and systems: see hiring and payroll.

What usually gets an ecommerce application declined?

The most common reasons are fewer than six months of sales, a declining trend over the last three months, and return or chargeback rates well above the category norm. Lenders also decline when personal and business money run through the same account, when a platform account has a suspension or health warning, and when the brand depends on one product that competitors can copy. Banks add losses after ad spend, negative equity from unpaid supplier balances, and no profit on the tax return. Why loans get denied covers the fixes.

How to apply

Apply once here, connect your store and bank accounts, and your application reaches revenue based, inventory, line of credit and SBA lenders together. Or connect your AI assistant to our MCP server through the agents hub and it can pull your platform exports, fill the application and submit it for you. It is free to the brand, and offers come back to the same place so you can compare the total cost of each one.