We search 85+ lenders to arrange invoice factoring and discounting facilities for UK businesses. Access up to 95% of your invoice value within 24 hours — without waiting 60 or 90 days to get paid.
We arrange the full range of invoice finance products, from whole-ledger factoring to selective spot funding. Every facility is sourced from our panel of 85+ lenders to match your sector, turnover, and cash flow goals.
Your finance provider advances cash against your outstanding invoices and manages your sales ledger on your behalf — including credit control and collections. Strong option for businesses wanting to free up management time.
You retain full control of your sales ledger and manage your own credit control. Your customers pay you directly as normal and never know a third party is involved. A confidential service used by established businesses with higher turnover.
Selective invoice finance lets you choose which invoices or customer accounts to fund, rather than committing your entire sales ledger. The most flexible option — useful if you only need occasional funding or want to test how invoice finance works before committing to a longer agreement.
We arrange asset finance alongside invoice finance for businesses needing to spread the cost of equipment, vehicles, or machinery. Many of our clients use invoice finance and asset based lending in combination to support growth without taking on unsecured debt.
Invoice finance is straightforward. Once your facility is live, you raise invoices as normal and draw against them on the same day. The cycle repeats across your sales ledger, giving you revolving working capital that grows as your turnover grows.
You raise an invoice against your finance facility as normal. Your dedicated account manager is on hand from day one to guide you through onboarding and answer questions as they arise.
Facility live in 3–10 daysYour finance provider advances you between 70% and 95% of the invoice value — typically within 24 hours of submission. That cash is immediately available for payroll, supplier payments, and new contracts.
Up to 95% advancedWhen your customer pays the invoice in full, you receive the remaining balance minus the agreed service fee and discount charge. The cycle continues across your entire sales ledger, automatically scaling as your turnover grows.
Revolving facilityAs an independent broker, we are not tied to any single lender or product. We compare 85+ invoice finance providers across the full UK market to find the right facility for your business.
We access the full UK invoice finance market, including high street banks, specialist lenders, and fintech platforms, to find you the best rate and structure.
You have a named account manager from day one who manages your facility, answers questions, and helps you get the most from your arrangement as your business grows.
We get multiple competing quotes from invoice finance providers on your behalf so you always see real pricing before committing to any facility. No obligation at any stage.
We can source facilities that include bad debt protection, covering outstanding invoices if a customer becomes insolvent. Particularly valuable where you trade with a small number of large clients.
Unlike a fixed business loan, an invoice finance facility backed by your sales ledger expands automatically as your turnover grows — no renegotiation, no new applications.
Most invoice finance providers can give an indicative decision quickly based on your turnover and sector. Once approved, your facility is typically set up within three to ten working days.
"We had been waiting 60 days for a major client to settle and it was putting real pressure on our payroll. Invoice Financing UK arranged a facility within a week and we had cash in the account almost immediately. Genuinely transformed how we operate."
"As a recruitment agency, our cash flow gap between placing candidates and getting paid by end clients was killing growth. The factoring facility they arranged was exactly right for our sector. Simple, fast, and the account manager really understood our business."
"We had already been turned down by our bank for an overdraft extension. Invoice Financing UK found us a confidential discounting facility that our customers know nothing about. It has been running smoothly for eight months with no issues."
Invoice finance is one of the most used forms of commercial finance in Britain right now. At Invoice Financing UK, we provide invoice financing services and arrange an invoice finance facility for businesses across the country who are tired of waiting on customer payments and want to turn their sales ledger into working cash. The UK invoice finance market was worth an estimated £22.7 billion in 2025, and more than 40,000 businesses now use factoring and invoice discounting to keep their cash flow strong.
This is not a niche product for struggling companies. It is mainstream business finance used by profitable, growing companies to manage cash flow, fund payroll, and take on new work without waiting. The number of businesses using it keeps rising year on year because the cash flow problem it solves is universal.
Invoice finance is a type of business finance that lets you unlock cash tied up in unpaid invoices without waiting for your business customers to pay on their credit terms. Instead of sitting on outstanding invoices for 30, 60, or even 90 days, you get the majority of that cash upfront, and the remaining balance once the customer pays.
At its simplest, invoice finance works like this. You raise an invoice against your invoice finance facility. Your finance provider advances you between 70% and 95% of the invoice value within 24 hours. When the customer pays invoices in full, you receive the remaining balance minus the agreed fees. That cycle repeats across your entire sales ledger, giving you a revolving working capital facility that grows as your turnover grows and keeps working capital available without constant renegotiation. That invoice finance facility is live from day one.
This is not a business loan. It is funding secured against your accounts receivable, which means it scales with your business rather than sitting at a fixed limit.
Understanding the types of invoice finance on offer is the first step to choosing the right product. The types of invoice finance broadly split into two main categories: invoice factoring and invoice discounting. Invoice factoring is the more hands-on option, and invoice discounting allows you to retain full control of collections.
Each type of invoice finance serves a different business need, and the right fit depends on your turnover, sector, customer base, and whether you want to manage your own credit control.
Invoice factoring is where your finance provider advances cash against your outstanding invoices and takes over your sales ledger management on your behalf. That means they handle credit control, chase customer payments, and manage collections, so you do not have to.
This makes invoice factoring a strong option for businesses that want to free up management time, and invoice factoring is particularly well suited to businesses with high invoice volumes. It is particularly useful for smaller companies, recruitment firms, and businesses in construction or transport where payment cycles are long. Bibby Financial Services and Ultimate Finance are both active in the factoring market, and Bibby Financial Services in particular has a strong reputation for sector-specific factoring solutions across the UK.
Factoring and invoice discounting are both forms of invoice finance, but the key difference is who manages the collections process. With factoring, the finance provider does it. With invoice discounting, you do.
Invoice discounting lets you retain your own sales ledger and manage your own credit control, while still accessing cash against your unpaid invoices. Your customers pay invoices directly to you as normal, and they do not know a third party is involved. This makes it a confidential service, and many businesses value that confidential service because their customers never know a third party is involved in the payment process.
This confidential service is the most widely used form of invoice discounting in the UK, and it suits more established businesses with an existing credit control team and higher turnover. An invoice discounting provider will typically want to see that your business has its own credit control processes in place before approving a confidential invoice discounting facility.
Lloyds Bank Commercial Finance is one of the largest providers of invoice discounting in the UK. Lloyds Bank offers whole-turnover invoice discounting facilities to businesses across a wide range of sectors. Lloyds Bank also works alongside Lloyds Bank Commercial Finance to provide broader business banking and commercial finance packages to larger clients. That said, Lloyds Bank is far from the only option, and many invoice finance providers outside the high street now offer invoice discounting facilities with faster onboarding and more flexible terms.
RBS Invoice Finance and Close Brothers Invoice Finance also offer confidential invoice discounting to UK businesses. At Invoice Financing UK, we compare the full market and can source the right confidential service or disclosed factoring arrangement rather than defaulting to any one lender.
Selective invoice finance lets you choose which invoices or which customer accounts to fund, rather than committing your entire sales ledger. It is the most flexible of the types of invoice finance but tends to carry a higher cost per invoice than a whole-ledger facility.
It works well for businesses that only need occasional funding, or those that want to test invoice finance work before committing to a longer invoice finance agreement. Spot and selective options are now widely available alongside standard whole-ledger facilities.
Poor cash flow kills otherwise healthy businesses. Most business owners we speak to know exactly how damaging a cash flow gap can be.
By converting your accounts receivable into immediate working capital, invoice finance gives you the cash flow to cover day-to-day costs, take on new contracts, and fund business growth without waiting for your business customers to pay. This is why invoice finance has become one of the most popular forms of business finance for UK SMEs.
Cash flow certainty also means you can negotiate better credit terms with your own suppliers, because you are not at the mercy of when your business customers settle. Better supplier pricing often translates directly into lower costs, which feeds back into profitability.
The ability to gain quick access to funds tied up in existing unpaid invoices is one of the core reasons businesses come to us. Businesses using invoice finance and asset based lending generated a combined annual turnover of more than £315 billion in 2024 across the UK economy. That figure reflects just how deeply invoice finance has embedded itself into British commercial finance.
UK finance data also shows that invoice finance providers processed an estimated £150 billion of finance annually across the British economy, which puts the scale of the market into context.
Invoice finance cost in the UK is made up of two main charges: a service fee and a discount fee.
The service fee covers account management, credit checks on your business customers, and credit control services if you are using factoring. The service fee typically ranges from 0.5% to 3% of invoice value, depending on your turnover and sector. Larger businesses tend to pay towards the lower end of that range.
The discount fee is the interest charged on the amount of cash advanced to you. It accrues daily from the day you receive funds until the customer pays. With the Bank of England base rate currently at 3.75%, most invoice finance providers price this at base rate plus a margin of between 1.5% and 3.5%, putting effective annual interest broadly between 5% and 7.25% on the amount drawn down.
Combining both charges, the total annual finance cost for most UK businesses falls between 1% and 4% of annual turnover. For a business turning over £500,000, that is roughly £5,000 to £20,000 per year. For a business at £1 million, the effective range is typically between 1% and 2.5%, since larger invoice discounting facility and factoring agreements attract lower percentage rates.
There may also be arrangement fees, typically £500 to £2,000, along with minimum service charges and occasional early termination fees depending on the invoice finance agreement you sign.
Please note that these figures are a rough guide based on current market averages, and the actual cost of your facility will vary based on your turnover, sector, debtor quality, and which finance provider you use. Invoice Financing UK gets multiple competing quotes on your behalf from invoice finance providers so you always see real figures before committing to any invoice finance facility.
Traditional overdraft facilities and secured lending require security, a strong credit history, and a lengthy approval process. Invoice finance is different. The funding is secured against your sales ledger, meaning your business customers' ability to pay matters far more than your own credit history.
This matters enormously for businesses that cannot access secured business loans or have found their business banking facilities limited. Many businesses that come to us have already been turned down by a high street bank. As traditional lenders have become more selective with business lending, demand for invoice finance solutions has risen sharply. In 2025, broker-led SME lending rose by 25% year on year, reflecting how many businesses are now looking beyond the high street for their commercial finance.
Invoice finance also scales in a way that fixed lending lines simply cannot. A business loan has a fixed ceiling. An invoice finance facility backed by your full sales ledger expands automatically as your turnover grows.
The difference between invoice finance and traditional borrowing is not just cost or speed. It is the fundamental structure. You are not borrowing against business assets or relying on personal guarantees in most cases. You are unlocking money you have already earned.
At Invoice Financing UK, we can arrange both asset finance and invoice finance, and many of our clients use invoice finance and asset based lending in combination to support business growth without taking on unsecured debt. Asset finance is used to spread the cost of purchasing equipment, vehicles, or machinery. It is one of the most common forms of business finance alongside invoice finance, and the two often work together within a combined invoice finance facility or asset based lending package.
Invoice finance is used to release cash already earned but not yet received. The two products are different in purpose, though they are often used together as part of an asset based lending strategy.
The UK now has more than 85 active invoice finance providers across the financial services sector, from large high street banks to specialist financial services lenders and fintech platforms. Lloyds Bank Commercial Finance, Lloyds Bank, Novuna Business Cash Flow, and Ultimate Finance all operate in this market. Lloyds Bank and Lloyds Bank Commercial Finance together represent one of the largest presences in UK invoice finance, particularly for invoice discounting among established businesses with higher turnover.
Lloyds Bank tends to suit larger businesses with clean ledgers and significant turnover, while providers like Novuna Business Cash Flow cover a wider range of SME sizes and sectors. Each of these offers invoice finance under slightly different terms and criteria. At Invoice Financing UK, we look at the full market, including specialist and alternative lenders, to match you with the right fit.
A growing number of invoice finance providers have also developed technology-led platforms that use open banking and automated credit assessments to speed up approval and onboarding. Fintech lenders now account for almost one in five new invoice finance originations in the UK, and for many businesses they offer faster access and more flexible invoice discounting facility structures than traditional lenders. The UK's financial services sector in invoice finance has evolved rapidly, with many providers now using real-time data to assess risk and reward businesses with clean ledgers.
Invoice finance solutions work differently across different industries, and the right structure depends on how your business operates. Recruitment and staffing companies are among the biggest users of invoice finance in Britain and hold an industry leading score for uptake, because they must fund weekly or fortnightly payroll long before their end client invoices are settled. Transport and logistics firms, manufacturing businesses, construction subcontractors, and wholesale distributors all use invoice finance heavily for the same reason: high operational costs against deferred customer payments.
Construction firms are now one of the fastest-growing user groups, with demand from project-based businesses rising sharply through 2025 and 2026. For construction businesses in particular, invoice finance and asset based lending structures often work together to cover both the cash flow gap and the cost of equipment and plant.
Overseas debt is another reason businesses seek invoice finance solutions. Where other businesses trade internationally, payment delays can be longer and credit risk higher. Invoice finance solutions that include bad debt protection help manage the risk of overseas debt and domestic non-payment alike.
Your sales ledger is the foundation of any invoice finance facility. It is the record of money owed to your business by other businesses on credit terms, and its quality directly affects how much funding you can access and at what cost.
Good sales ledger management means keeping your invoices accurate, your customer records up to date, and your credit terms clearly agreed with each customer. Providers assess your sales ledger management processes as part of their onboarding, and businesses with clean, well-managed ledgers tend to get better rates and higher advance percentages.
At Invoice Financing UK, we help you understand what invoice finance providers look for in a sales ledger before you apply. Poor sales ledger management, including undisputed overdue invoices or missing payment term documentation, can slow down your application or reduce the amount you can draw against your facility.
Sales ledger management is also relevant to bad debt protection. Providers use your sales ledger to assess concentration risk, meaning how exposed you are if one of your larger customers fails to pay. Where that risk is high, bad debt protection becomes particularly valuable.
Bad debt protection covers the outstanding invoices that would otherwise become a loss if a customer becomes insolvent or unable to pay. It is an optional addition to most invoice finance facilities, but one we recommend businesses consider seriously, particularly where you trade with a small number of large clients or where overseas debt is a factor.
When customers pay invoices normally, bad debt protection sits quietly in the background. But when a customer cannot pay, it can be the difference between absorbing a significant loss and continuing to trade without disruption. It is particularly worth considering if you carry overseas debt across multiple markets, as the risk of non-payment is harder to monitor and recover without the right protection in place.
The cost of bad debt protection is typically an additional 0.3% to 1.5% of invoice value, depending on the risk profile of your customers. It is worth weighing that cost against the potential damage of a single large write-off.
The application process starts with an initial assessment covering your turnover, sector, customer base quality, and basic personal and business details. Most invoice finance providers can give an indicative decision quickly based on this information.
Once you are approved, your invoice discounting facility or factoring facility is typically set up within three to ten working days. From that point, funding against your unpaid invoices is usually available within 24 hours of submitting them. You gain quick access to cash you have already earned, without waiting for customers to pay invoices on whatever payment terms you have agreed.
At Invoice Financing UK, you will have a dedicated account manager or dedicated client manager from day one who will manage the relationship, answer questions, and help you get the most from your facility. We also provide ongoing support around sales ledger management and help you benchmark your facility against the market as your business grows.
We work with invoice finance providers across the full UK market, including those who offer a sales tailored facility for businesses with specific sector needs or unusual debtor profiles. Whether you need a standard whole-ledger structure or something built around particular customer accounts or invoice finance solutions for your sector, we find the right match.
Invoice finance is available to UK businesses that sell goods or services to other businesses on credit terms. You do not need a long trading history. Some lenders will consider applications from businesses in their first few months of trading, as long as they have creditworthy customers and verifiable invoices.
Most invoice finance providers set a minimum turnover threshold, and checking the minimum turnover requirement upfront is one of the first things we do at Invoice Financing UK. For invoice factoring, this is commonly around £50,000 to £100,000 per year, though some specialist lenders offer invoice finance solutions to smaller businesses, though the minimum turnover figure varies between lenders. For invoice discounting, the minimum turnover threshold is typically higher, so checking minimum turnover requirements early saves time. For invoice discounting, minimum turnover thresholds tend to be higher, often £250,000 or above, because established businesses with existing own credit control processes are the typical fit.
UK finance figures show that the majority of providers have broadened their criteria in recent years as competition in the market has increased and technology has made onboarding faster. The UK finance sector now supports businesses with more than £20 billion in available funding at any one time through invoice finance alone.
If you have been turned down by a high street lender or found that traditional lending does not suit your cash flow needs, invoice finance may still be available to you. The assessment is primarily based on the creditworthiness of your business customers, not your own credit history. Established businesses with large, blue-chip clients often unlock the best rates and highest advance percentages, but many invoice finance providers work across a much wider range of business profiles.
Invoice finance does not have to work alone. Many businesses use it as part of a broader commercial finance or asset based lending structure, combining invoice finance with asset finance, property finance, or other forms of business finance to maximise available working capital.
Asset based lending allows businesses to borrow against a range of business assets, including accounts receivable, stock, plant, and property. Invoice finance is typically the largest component of an asset based lending facility, but the combination of funding lines can significantly increase the total amount available to a growing business.
UK finance figures on asset based lending show that businesses using invoice finance and asset based lending structures consistently outperform those relying solely on overdrafts for working capital. Asset based lending standards in the UK are governed by UK Finance, which sets out guidelines on how commercial finance providers assess and manage invoice finance and asset based lending facilities.
Commercial finance through invoice finance is particularly popular among manufacturing, wholesale, and transport businesses, and asset finance is often arranged alongside it. These sectors carry business assets including large stocks and high-value equipment, and a combined commercial finance package often unlocks more funding than any single product could.
At Invoice Financing UK, we work across invoice finance, asset based lending, and wider commercial finance to build the right funding structure for your business. Our team has experience across the full range of commercial finance products available to UK businesses, and we stay current on what each invoice finance provider offers so we can match you accurately.
If your business is waiting too long to get paid because of unpaid invoices building up on your ledger, Invoice Financing UK can help you access the cash you need. We arrange invoice finance facilities across the UK. Whether it is invoice factoring, confidential invoice discounting, or full asset based lending structures for businesses of all sizes, we have the market access to find the right fit. Invoice factoring in particular suits businesses that want collections handled end to end.
We do the work of sourcing, comparing, and negotiating with invoice finance providers on your behalf, so you get the right invoice discounting facility or factoring facility at the best available terms. Whether you need to manage your business cashflow and overall cash flow more predictably, protect against overseas debt, or fund business growth without taking on more debt, invoice finance could be the answer.
Contact Invoice Financing UK now for a free, no-obligation quote. Tell us your turnover and sector and we will come back with real figures from real providers, fast.
Tell us your annual turnover and sector and we will come back with real figures from real invoice finance providers. No obligation, no credit check — just a straight comparison of what the market can offer your business.
We typically respond within one working day with real figures.