Related Headlines
| 08/05/2025 | LightSpeed: $100M in MCAs on bal. sheet |
| 02/09/2025 | Lightspeed accelerates MCA biz |
| 01/04/2024 | Lightspeed: 'Our MCA biz is growing' |
| 06/21/2023 | Lightspeed expands MCAs to UK, AUS, NZ, QC |
| 02/02/2023 | Lightspeed's MCA business is growing |
Stories
Lightspeed: Merchant Cash Advance Business Key to Delivering Long-Term Shareholder Value
July 31, 2026“For us, it’s really about where we are investing to deliver long-term shareholder value,” said Lightspeed CFO Asha Bakshani during the company’s FY Q1 2027 earnings call. “For now, that is really the Merchant Cash Advance business and returning cash to our shareholders through buybacks.”
Lightspeed described MCA as a “high-margin business” that has grown for them by 56% year-over-year.
“Aside from the potential share buyback, our largest use of cash will be the continued growth of our Merchant Cash Advance program,” Bakshani said. “There were $160 million in MCAs outstanding at the end of the quarter, and we intend to continue expanding this high-margin program over time. As we grow the program, we remain disciplined in our underwriting, and default rates have stayed consistent in the low single-digit range, which gives us confidence to continue expanding.”
Lightspeed Capital’s MCA Revenue Grew by 73%
June 5, 2026Capital revenue grew 73% year-over-year, while merchant cash advances outstanding grew a more modest 12% year-over-year, thanks to a payback period that declined to 7 months, a 13% improvement over last year,” said Lightspeed CFO Asha Bakshani during the company’s recently quarterly earnings call.
When Daniel Perlin of RBC Capital Markets asked if that growth might continue to accelerate, Bakshani said they were still being careful and to expect 35%+ growth going forward.
“What we have to keep in mind at the end of the day, Dan, is we want to make sure that our default rates remain in the low single digits,” Bakshani said. “We’ve done a really good job at accelerating ROI on Lightspeed Capital, reducing the months payback with which we get repaid (down to 7), and that’s resulted in very low default rates, the lowest we’ve seen in the industry, to be honest. So what’s important to us is to grow this business prudently and we expect to continue to do that with some nice 35-plus percent growth in fiscal ’27.”
Lightspeed funded about $350M in MCAs from March 31, 2025 – March 31, 2026.
Lightspeed: ‘our largest use of cash will be growing our merchant cash advance business’
February 10, 2026
Lightspeed Capital originated $257M in merchant cash advances in the last 9 months of 2025, up from $207M over the same period in 2024. The company has repeatedly talked up the healthy profit margins earned on MCAs and last quarter called them a “super popular upsell.” Lightspeed operates in the POS and e-commerce space, competing against companies such as Shopify, Square, Toast, and Clover. Lightspeed Capital is its MCA business.
“Aside from potential buybacks, our largest use of cash will be growing our merchant cash advance business,” said Lightspeed CFO Asha Bakshani during the company’s recent quarterly earnings call. “There are currently $106 million in merchant cash advances outstanding, and we intend to continue to grow this high-margin business over time.”
Lightspeed MCAs are typically satisfied by merchants within seven months, but they want to shrink that timeframe even more. “Our goal is to target a shorter remittance time frame, and we are making great progress towards that end,” said Bakshani. The average factor rate is a 1.14.
Lightspeed Commerce: ‘MCAs a Super Popular Upsell’
November 10, 2025Lightspeed, the point-of-sale an e-commerce platform, has experienced tremendous success with its MCA product. More than $107M of MCAs currently sit on their balance sheet. The company does not sell the receivables to third parties.
“We are using [Lightpeed] Capital to upsell and cross-sell across the base and in the rest of the world portfolio, Capital is one of the products that’s super popular in the upsell to the merchant base,” said Lightspeed President JD Saint-Martin in the company’s Fiscal Q2 2026 earnings call.
Outside of a potential stock buyback, the company’s largest use of cash going forward will be growing its MCA business, the company stated. Experience with this product has also made their underwriting more efficient and they’ve managed to reduce their average payback period to seven months. Revenue on MCAs year-over-year grew by 32%.
Lightspeed’s MCA business also expanded to Switzerland this quarter, the company revealed.
LightSpeed Capital Has Over $100M in MCAs on Balance Sheet
August 5, 2025LightSpeed Capital, the MCA division of LightSpeed Commerce, has over $100M in merchant cash advances on its balance sheet, according to the company’s latest quarterly earnings report. The POS company reported that LightSpeed Capital’s revenue grew 34% year-over-year.
The company’s balance-sheet-driven approach has made them relatively conservative and cautious with originations growth. For example, in the preceding quarter, Lightspeed CFO Asha Bakshani said “There is a lot of opportunity. We can move faster if we wanted to. When we look at our peers, for example, they are giving out 1% of their [Gross Transaction Volume] in merchant cash advance. Lightspeed is well below that. 1% of our GTV would be almost $1 billion in merchant cash advance. So when we think about the opportunity, it’s there. It’s just that in this macro, we want to move carefully on a product like Capital. Like I mentioned earlier, our default rates are in the very low single digits, and we want to keep it there.”
Lightspeed: Potential to do up to $1B in Merchant Cash Advances
June 15, 2025Lightspeed may have only done $45 million in MCAs in FY 2025 but the point-of-sale company is continuing to grow that particular lucrative segment of its business conservatively, and possibly far below its full potential.
“There is a lot of opportunity. We can move faster if we wanted to,” said Lightspeed CFO Asha Bakshani during the company’s most recent earnings call. “When we look at our peers, for example, they are giving out 1% of their [Gross Transaction Volume] in merchant cash advance. Lightspeed is well below that. 1% of our GTV would be almost $1 billion in merchant cash advance. So when we think about the opportunity, it’s there. It’s just that in this macro, we want to move carefully on a product like Capital. Like I mentioned earlier, our default rates are in the very low single digits, and we want to keep it there.”
Lightspeed estimates its MCA program will grow by 30% in FY 2026. Part of the reason the company has grown its MCA business so conservatively is that it funds 100% of them on balance sheet.
The company advertises that MCA payments are enabled by either split or ACH.
Lightspeed Accelerates Growth of its MCA Business
February 9, 2025Lightspeed Capital accelerated the growth of its principal issued for its merchant cash advance program, the company shared in its latest quarterly earnings report. Normally the company has more to say about this division but its attention was focused on an “executing a full transformation plan.”
As part of its previously-announced strategic review, the Company conducted an in-depth evaluation of its portfolio, including market attractiveness, competitive dynamics, and its right-to-win as well as evaluating the best ownership structure to navigate Lightspeed through a transformation. The Company has already set its transformation plan in motion, focusing on growth in retail in North America and hospitality in Europe, both leading growth engines, with a strategic focus on expanding locations and increasing software and payments ARPU, with the other business areas optimized for efficiency and aimed at driving a maximum profitability for the whole business.
The Company-wide transformation to deliver on the new strategy will focus on:
- Go-to-market: enhancing Lightspeed’s go-to-market strategy with targeted outbound efforts, field sales and local marketing expansion, and verticalized execution to maximize efficiency and improve win rates, including deepening supplier integration in focus verticals and deploying AI-driven customer acquisition across retail in North America;
- Product & Technology: investments focused on key growth areas—enhancing inventory management, forecasting, and supplier integration for retail in North America, while optimizing operations, guest experience, and analytics for hospitality in Europe;
- Capital Allocation: transformation initiatives to free up capital for investment in growth areas; and
- Share Repurchase: a share repurchase program to return up to $400 million in cash to shareholders, including the immediate execution of approximately $100 million3 under our current authorization, plus an additional $300 million, in each case subject to market conditions.
Lightspeed: ‘MCAs continue to be popular’
December 10, 2024
“Lightspeed Capital revenue grew to $9.3 million from $4.2 million in Q2 of last year, up 121% year over year as the program continues to be popular with our customers,”” said Lightspeed CFO Asha Bakshani. “Lightspeed Capital offers fast access to capital and automatic repayment through Lightspeed Payments.”
“Overall, Lightspeed generated $277M in revenue for FY Q2 2025 of which only $9.3M was attributed to their MCA business (less than 3.5%). Still, the company says the extreme gross margins are creating a material impact for the business.
“We’re definitely seeing an impact from Lightspeed Capital,” Bakshani said. “I mean when we think about the numbers, and you’ll see them in our disclosure docs, we’re looking at high single digits per quarter in revenue. But because that comes in at 95% plus gross margins, it definitely has an impact already in offsetting both the residuals moving over to payments and also just more, more of our revenue coming in at Lightspeed Payments gross margin.”
Lightspeed is a publicly traded retail POS company with a current market cap of $3.68B CAD and $105M in MCAs on its balance sheet.
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