Which industries is invoice finance best for?

The single test is simple: do you invoice other businesses and then wait to get paid? If yes, invoice finance probably suits you. If your customers pay you by card at the till, it almost certainly does not.

Across the deals we arrange, the industries that lean hardest on invoice finance are food and drink, healthcare and care services, wholesale and distribution, manufacturing and recruitment. They share the same pattern: work delivered now, payment weeks later. The facility releases the cash tied up in that gap and grows with the ledger as they win more work.

The businesses it does not suit are just as clear. Hospitality, retail and other consumer-facing businesses take payment at the point of sale, so there is no sales ledger of unpaid invoices to lend against. Those businesses are usually better served by a merchant cash advance, repaid as a share of card takings, or by stock and trade finance.

These are observations from our own book rather than market-wide statistics, and the smaller sectors rest on fewer deals, so treat them as a guide, not a rule.

For the full picture, including the share of each sector’s funding that goes to invoice finance and which products fit the sectors it does not suit, see our detailed article, Which industries suit invoice finance.