MCA Funders in the Public Record

A question comes up often: can UCC filings identify small businesses that took a merchant cash advance and might want relief from it? We do not sell UCC data as MCA debt-relief lead lists, and the filings are a poor basis for one. This piece explains how the data is collected, what it actually shows about MCA and private funders, and why.

How the data gets from a state office to this page

1. Public filings. Every UCC-1 is a public record held by a state filing office. Anyone can search them one at a time.
2. Scheduled collection. We collect each state on its own cadence, some daily and some weekly, with extra runs when a state falls behind. States publish on their own schedules, so the most recent days are always the least complete.
3. Cleaning. Duplicates are removed, business and lender names are standardized so one lender is not counted as several, and every filing is dated by when it was filed, not when we collected it.
4. Classification. Each secured party is typed: bank, captive equipment lender, MCA or private funder, government, filing agent or other business. Filing agents, who file on a lender's behalf, are kept separate from the lenders they represent.
5. Matching. Where possible, filings are matched to public business records so a filing can be tied to a specific business record.
6. Aggregation. For this magazine we publish totals and patterns only. No business names appear in these pages.

What the filings show about MCA and private funders

580 MCA and private funders filed in this issue's window (July 1 – September 30, 2026). 406 of them filed five or fewer UCC-1s, and only 12 filed 100 or more. Most are small, occasional filers.

That is the first surprise. 97.2% of businesses with an MCA or private-funder filing show just one such funder. Only 225 show two or more, and for those the first and last filings were a median of 11 days apart. The public record may show only part of what a business has taken on: funders can file late, rarely, or not at all, and filing agents stand in for the actual lender on about 12% of all filings.

MCA and private funders also tend to appear after other lenders: 18.7% of their filings land on a business that already had another lender on record, against 5.7% for banks. 12% of these businesses have a bank, equipment lender or other lender on record as well. Our Late Arrivals article covers that pattern in detail.

What the stacked cases look like

Here are the three most active stacked patterns in this window, with every identifying detail removed:

A profile like this could mean several funders advancing capital in quick succession, a refinance, a restructuring, or a name collision between two unrelated businesses. The filings cannot say which. A raw record holds only a business name and address, the secured party, a filing date and a lapse date: no balance, no payment history, no default.

What we do and do not do

Yaneto does not sell UCC data as MCA debt-relief lead lists, and we do not market it or build products for that purpose.

UCC filings are public records that anyone can search and filter, so this describes what we build and promote, not a limit on every lawful use of public information.

• A filing is not distress. It shows that a lender claimed an interest in a business's assets. It does not show that the business is behind on payments, wants help, or is in any difficulty.
• The record is partial. With 97.2% of businesses showing a single funder and agents standing in for many lenders, a list built from filings would be noisy and could mislead about who actually carries multiple advances.
• These are people's livelihoods. Approaching a small business that may be under repayment pressure, on the strength of a public filing alone, is something we do not promote or build products for.

Our data is built for lenders, brokers, servicers, vendors and the professionals who work with them, so they can understand the market, check the order of filings on a borrower, and benchmark competitors.