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Merchant Cash Advance Requirements in Canada: The Checklist
No mystery, no fine print — here is everything Trade Wings Capital asks for, start to finish.
Eligibility: the typical profile
- Canadian citizen or permanent resident business owner. We fund in all ten provinces — see where we fund — and we work in English, French, and Spanish.
- 6+ months in business. Enough operating history to show a real revenue rhythm in your statements. You don't need years of track record; you need months of genuine deposits.
- $10,000+ average monthly revenue. That's the typical profile, not a wall. A merchant cash advance is a purchase of your future receivables, so there have to be receivables — steady sales are the engine of the entire product.
- Credit score from around 500. Workable. A past discharged bankruptcy is not an automatic no. Your bank statements carry more weight here than your score ever will.
Clear those four and you're in the typical approval zone. Close but not sure — a seven-month-old business, revenue that swings with the season? Apply anyway. Edge cases get read by humans, not filtered out by a form.
The ten application questions — and why each one exists
The application asks ten quick things. Here's the honest reason behind each:
- Time in business — confirms the 6-month threshold.
- Monthly sales — anchors the size of offer your revenue can support.
- Bankruptcy history — asked so it can be handled properly, not so you can be screened out. Discharged is not an automatic no.
- Legal business name — must match your bank account. Mismatched names are the number-one cause of avoidable delay.
- Your name — the owner we'll actually be talking to.
- Email — where your offer and document requests go.
- Phone — approvals can come within hours; a reachable owner keeps a file moving.
- Business location — routes your file correctly; we fund coast to coast.
- Website — optional. Adds context, never decides an approval.
- Funding amount — anywhere from $5,000 to $500,000.
It takes about a minute on the 60-second application, or Chloe can take the whole thing conversationally in chat. Same questions, same speed, either way.
Documents: the complete list
- To start: business bank statements — three months is the minimum to open review. Want the fastest decision? Send six months. More history means fewer follow-up questions.
- Maybe during review: Articles of Incorporation, a void cheque, government photo ID. Not always requested — have them findable, not necessarily attached.
- Final step: securely connect your business bank account to complete the approval. It verifies the account you've been showing us and replaces days of manual back-and-forth.
Statement quality matters more than people think. Download full PDF statements from your online banking. Screenshots, partial months, and phone photos of a monitor all trigger a "could you resend this" email — and that email costs you hours you were trying to save.
One habit worth stealing from the fastest files: keep a funding folder. Six statement PDFs, Articles of Incorporation, a void cheque, photo ID — collected once, topped up monthly. The day you actually need capital in a hurry, the entire document stage takes five minutes instead of an evening spent digging through email and online banking.
What the review team is actually looking for
Once your statements arrive, a person reads them. Here's the checklist on their side of the desk:
- Deposit consistency. Regular sales landing in the account, week after week. Those deposits are the future receivables being purchased, so they're the core of the file.
- Agreement between application and statements. If you said $18,000 a month and the statements show roughly that, the file glides through. If they disagree, a human has to stop and reconcile the two with you.
- How the account handles its low points. Every business has slow weeks. One rough month with a clear story is normal; chronic NSFs are a harder conversation — but still a conversation, not a slammed door.
- Time in business, confirmed. The statements should show a company that has genuinely been trading for 6+ months, not an account opened last quarter.
Notice what's missing from that list: collateral appraisals, business plans, financial projections, and a bank-style credit cutoff. This is a review of your sales, because the product is a purchase of a share of your future sales — not a loan secured against your assets.
Two profiles that do better than they expect
The eight-month-old trucking company in Winnipeg. Too young for most bank products, full stop. But eight months of steady freight deposits is exactly the kind of history this review is built to read. Time in business: check. Revenue: check. A bank says "come back in two years." The statements say there's a real business here right now.
The Quebec City salon owner with a 540 score and a discharged bankruptcy. On a traditional scorecard, dead on arrival. Here, the bankruptcy is discharged and disclosed, and the recent statements show healthy, consistent deposits. That file gets a genuine review — because the question being asked is about the business's sales today, not its scars from five years ago.
What you don't need
No collateral. No business plan. No pitch deck. No perfect credit. And no patience for a six-week process — approval can come within hours, funds in as little as 24. If you've been putting off applying because you assumed you'd need a binder of paperwork, the entire ask fits in one sentence: ten answers and three months of bank statements.
Ready to check the boxes?
The 30-second fit check on the homepage tells you where you stand, and Chloe can take the whole application in chat — in English, French, or Spanish. Prefer a human voice? Call 1-866-51WINGS, call or text 416-900-4101, or email offers@twcapital.ca. Detailed answers live in the FAQ.
FAQ
What credit score do I need for a merchant cash advance in Canada?
Scores from around 500 are workable. The review leans on your business bank statements — your actual revenue — far more than on your personal score. Bring six months of statements and let the deposits do the talking.
I went through a bankruptcy. Am I automatically out?
No. A discharged bankruptcy is not an automatic no. Disclose it on the application — there's a question for exactly this — and the review focuses on what your business is doing now, not what happened then.
How many months of bank statements do I need?
Three months is the minimum to start the review. Six months is better: it gives the team the fuller picture, which usually means fewer follow-up questions and a faster decision.
What does an advance cost?
Every offer is specific to your business. Your specialist walks you through the total cost and the full payment schedule before you accept — no obligation, no pressure, no surprises later.
Is a merchant cash advance a loan?
No. It's a purchase of future receivables: Trade Wings Capital provides capital up front, and your business delivers a share of its future sales. That structure is why there's no collateral, and why the review reads your sales instead of your assets.
Related guides: Funding with bad credit · What is a merchant cash advance?