National Business Capital Review 2023

National Business Capital, a lending marketplace, partners with dozens of lenders in the hopes of matching you with the perfect business loan. But can National Business Capital actually make you that match?

It’s possible, since National Business Capital has a large partner network that lets it lend to many kinds of businesses and borrowers (including those with bad credit scores). Plus, lots of customers have very good things to say about National Business Capital.

But National Business Capital withholds important information about many of its loans―and offers very misleading information about others. So despite National Business Capital’s advantages as a loan marketplace, we suggest looking for business financing elsewhere.

Because National  Business Capital is a lending marketplace, it doesn’t actually offer its own lending products. Instead, it connects you with lenders that do.

Why does that matter? Well, for starters it means you can have a wide variety of products (and prices) within one category. One lender might have a business loan with an 18-month term and a 12% interest rate, for example, while another lender offers a five-year term and a 6% interest rate.

Not that National Business Capital lists any interest rates. At all. We find this very frustrating (as we’ll discuss more later), since it means you have no idea if National partners with very competitive lenders or really mediocre lenders.

At any rate, let’s talk about the loan products National Business Capital offers through its lending partners.

For starters, National Business Capital can help you get small-business loans and business lines of credit. Both of these types of funding work for many types of business expenses, from payroll to marketing to inventory. As a rule, term loans work better for one-time planned expenses, while business lines of credit offer better cash flow help.

For business owners with less-than-perfect credit scores, National Business Capital offers accounts receivable financing (a.k.a. invoice financing) and merchant cash advances. These kinds of funding tend to cost more than traditional business loans, but they also have much lower (if any) credit requirements. Just make sure you understand what you’ll end up paying. Merchant cash advances in particular try to hide their high costs with a confusing fee structure.

National Business Capital also has loans for specific uses, such as its equipment financing and commercial mortgages. As you can guess, equipment financing lets you buy business equipment, while commercial mortgages let you purchase commercial real estate. These usually have lower interest rates than other kinds of funding because the property or equipment you buy doubles as collateral for the loan.

And finally, National Business Capital can help you get SBA loans. SBA business loans come backed and regulated by the US Small Business Administration, which  means they have competitive interest rates and terms. As a bonus, they’re usually easier to qualify for than traditional bank loans.

Now, National Business Capital does list other loan solutions, like these:

• Hybridge SBA Loan
• Performance Advance
• eQuickment Financing
• Medical practice financing
• Franchise financing
• Startup financing

But as far as we can tell, these aren’t actually unique products. The Hybridge SBA Loan, for example, isn’t actually an exciting new program from the SBA―it’s National Business Capital getting you a short-term loan to tide you over until your SBA loan gets approved.

Likewise, the Performance Advance appears to just be a new way to market a merchant cash advance, the startup financing just refers to lenders that work with relatively young businesses, and so on.

That said, National Business Capital does have cannabis financing. That’s noteworthy because most lenders won’t touch cannabis businesses with a 10-foot pole. So while cannabis financing probably consists of pretty ordinary financing products, the fact that you can get funding for your cannabis business at all is pretty impressive.

So now you’ve seen what National Business Capital has to offer. But is it worth working with? Let’s get into it.

We’ve found a few things to like about National Business Capital.

For starters, we always like lending marketplaces because they offer so many different loan options. Whether you’re expanding your restaurant, stocking your boutique, or staffing your agency, a marketplace like National Business Capital can connect you with financing options.

And sure enough, National Business Capital partners with over 75 different lenders. That means that National Business Capital has options for all ranges of credit scores (including for business owners with bad credit). Likewise, National Business Capital can help fund even young businesses (as young as six months) and businesses with pretty moderate revenue.

Plus, according to customers, National Business Capital is doing a good job. National Business Capital earns a 5.0 out of 5.0 on Trustpilot, with tons of reviews praising National Business Capital’s easy loan application process and great customer service.¹

(We do feel the need to point out that such a perfect score is actually a little suspicious. That said, we didn’t see clear evidence that National Business Capital is cheating the review system. Use your own judgment here.)

In other words, you may like National Business Capital a lot. All the same, you might want to look at some of National Business Capital’s competition.

Given National Business Capital’s model, we think it’s best to compare it to other online business loan marketplaces like Fundera, Lendio, Nav, and SmartBiz.

All of these marketplaces work essentially the same way: You submit a basic loan application, the marketplace shops around within its lending network to find loan matches, and then you choose your favorite loan offer and finalize things with that lender.

So what makes them different? Well, most obviously, National Business Capital is the only loan marketplace that doesn’t publish any information about interest rates. It keeps those hush-hush for some reason, which we don’t like.

That’s one of the reasons that we suggest applying with Lendio or Fundera by Nerdwallet over National Business Capital. We also, as we said earlier, dislike that National Business Capital has misleading information about its loan offerings. We haven’t seen other marketplaces do that.

In fact, let’s go ahead and dig a little deeper into those (and other) downsides to National Business Capital.

We told you earlier about National Business Capital’s Hybridge SBA Loan―which is really just National Business Capital getting you short-term financing while you wait for an SBA loan to go through.

On its website, National Business Capital refers to this loan as a “New Expedited SBA Program,” which sure makes it sound like an official program through the US Small Business Administration (SBA).

But again, it’s not. Keep in mind, lots of business owners like SBA loans precisely because they’re so tightly regulated by the SBA. So we take real issue with describing a random, unregulated loan product as an SBA program.

And if National Business Capital is so misleading about something like that―something involving a US government agency―what else is it willing to mislead you about?

When you’re giving up sensitive personal and business information to a lending company, you need to be able to trust it. And based on National Business Capital’s misleading website, we don’t find National Business Capital especially trustworthy.

National Business Capital is a lending marketplace with a large network of lender partners. That means it offers lots of different loan products for all sorts of needs and borrower qualifications. And National Business Capital earns very positive customer reviews for its financial services.

That said, we have some pretty serious reservations about National Business Capital. It doesn’t publish information about interest rates or its lending partners (info other marketplaces gladly share). Likewise, it has some very misleading information about loan programs on its website that makes us hesitant about trusting it.

So despite the positive customer reviews, we think you’ll have a better borrowing experience with a different lending marketplace.

Learn more about our favorite business loan marketplace, Lendio, in our detailed Lendio review.

Yes, all SBA loans require personal guarantees from the business owner.

Business loan lengths can range from six months or so for short-term loans to 25 years for long-term real estate loans.

Disclaimer

At Business.org, our research is meant to offer general product and service recommendations. We don't guarantee that our suggestions will work best for each individual or business, so consider your unique needs when choosing products and services.