Sean Murray is the President and Chief Editor of deBanked and the founder of the Broker Fair Conference. Connect with me on LinkedIn or follow me on twitter. You can view all future deBanked events here.
Articles by Sean Murray
Speed to Lead, Closing the Deal, and Running an ISO Shop
April 15, 2026
I sat down with Nicole Cruz, CEO of Redline Capital Inc, a brokerage based in in Secaucus, New Jersey. Cruz spilled some of the secret sauce, including what happened when she tried lead sources that her peers and competitors adamantly claimed weren’t good. Cruz started in the industry in 2018 and worked as a sales rep and ISO rep before trying her hand at starting her own company. One of the signature elements of their sales culture is the daily “power hours” they have. When I arrived on site, they were in the middle of one. She explains it all and more in our talk.
You can follow Cruz on her Instagram here.
While we’re posting some short video snippets across social media, you can listen to the full thing on Spotify while you’re on your commute.
Also, make sure you’re registered for Broker Fair, coming up on June 1 in New York City! Brokerfair.org.
Webinar: Important Industry Updates with Greenspoon Marder & deBanked
April 7, 2026Join us for a joint webinar on April 30th. You can register here.
Just the Facts With LendFax
April 1, 2026More than 76% of small business owners who apply for financing through their system do it from a mobile device. That’s the fax from LendFax, a one-stop shop for business owners (and consumers) to be paired with the most appropriate service provider for their needs. The information they submit through the curated intake process is pushed to their partners via API, and then LendFax continues to communicate with those customers to make sure they complete the process with them.
Nick De Jesus, LendFax’s Chief Marketing Officer, says that the process relies on enterprise-grade infrastructure to make it all work and is the culmination of years of in-house development and an obsessive desire to achieve the most optimal outcomes for all parties in the process.
“I’m working non-stop, 12 hours, 13 hours a day on this, 100% passion, I couldn’t see myself doing anything else,” De Jesus says of his time spent at LendFax.
That he’s there doing this at all is due to a chance intersection in his life. For example, De Jesus had been on an accelerated track in college and was bound for medical school at an extremely young age. His special area of study as a nineteen-year-old was heterotopic ossification and involved researching bone formation from trauma and soft stem cell tissues. And that was the path he had surrendered himself to until one night, a few acquaintances asked for his input on a tech project involving small business financing, thinking his broad knowledge could be insightful. But what De Jesus learned from them had him hooked immediately, and he dropped everything to be a part of it.
“I finished my cell biology exam and the next Monday I was in [their] office,” De Jesus said.
De Jesus says that they’re aware that LendFax isn’t the only operator of their kind in the space, but that by being lean and running efficiently, partners on their platform can get “enterprise infrastucture without the enterprise pricing.” Depending on the relationship setup, partners can get as little as a merchant’s qualified and completed application or as much as the entire deal with full docs, all managed by LendFax and ported into the partner’s CRM in real time.
De Jesus is a regular at the big trade shows and stressed just how important in-person relationships are in this field, but noted that the merchant side is different, that merchants looking for financing have trended toward solutions that produce the least amount of friction and interaction along the way.
“…things are moving definitely more to the digital landscape where people just want to go online, submit information, without even texting or talking or emailing anybody and get an answer,” De Jesus said. “So that’s kind of what we’re trying to do with LendFax, is we’re kind of just trying to bring them the offers based on the answer that they select.”
Concerned About The MCA Automatic Debit Law in Texas? This ACH Company Says There’s a Way
March 25, 2026
There may be no need to overcomplicate Merchant Cash Advance compliance in Texas. A key phrase in the MCA prohibition law that went into effect last year specifies that it’s a prohibition on “establishing a mechanism for automatically debiting a recipient’s account” unless a lot of other requirements are met.
One company looked closely at that piece of the language and came up with a simple solution.
“…our approach is to request the payment at each time and capture the authorization at the time of the transaction,” said John Innes, President of the Texas-based and aptly-named ACH Processing Company. “So instead of capturing an authorization at the beginning and embedding that into the documents where you’re going to do a recurring debit transaction to the merchant’s account, you are sending a request saying, ‘Okay, please authorize this payment.’ And so each payment is individually authorized so you don’t need that security interest [component] anymore.”
No automatic recurring debits. Instead there’s a Request For Payment that requires merchants to manually authorize debits on a debit-by-debit basis whether that be daily, weekly, or monthly, depending on whatever the agreed frequency is.
“I think this was maybe the intent of the law,” Innes continued. “It gives the merchant kind of that control over that debit and it fosters communication between the two parties.”
Innes said there’s various ways that this interaction can be conducted to reduce the friction of this process.
Other options proposed across the industry have focused on another piece of the language, that the prohibition is specifically meant for “commercial sales-based financing providers” and the proposed cure for that is to offer a non-sales-based financing product in the state instead. ACH Processing Company’s solution, however, allows an MCA funder to keep its product suite as-is.
“…you don’t have to break all that,” said Innes. “Continue with the same business plan. ”
Since the Texas law went into effect seven months ago, Innes says that numerous funders have still been in a holding pattern trying to figure out how to approach it. It’s their belief that this solution is a simple way to now get Texas turned back on if they’re ready.
Sales Tips and Closing MCA Deals With Sam Kaye on the deBanked Podcast
March 18, 2026If you’ve seen some clips on Instagram between myself and Sam Kaye on how to sell an MCA on the phone, they come from a much wider two hour conversation/interview where we talked exclusively about selling deals. Kaye trains sales floors in the industry. In this podcast, Kaye gets very specific on how to sell and I open it up by mentioning that if salespeople are going to apply certain strategies, it has to be the same strategies that their bosses want them to apply. I call it alignment. Then we get into the weeds and he shares his ways of doing everything. Embed below and Spotify link here.
If you just want the short clips, we’ll continue to post them in little sound bites, but if you’re in the car or going for a 2-hour walk, this is the full audio.
Richmond Capital Leaves MCA Space With Negative Case Law On the Way Out
February 24, 2026“Substantive unconscionability is clear from the MCAs’ exorbitant and criminally usurious interest rates, among other things.”
– Appellate Division, First Judicial Department, Supreme Court of New York, February 19, 2026
Richmond Capital Group was never part of the mainstream merchant cash advance industry. The company made headlines for years for its alleged connection to Jonathan Braun, who is now back in prison. After landing in the crosshairs of the FTC, a federal court permanently banned the company and its owner from working in the MCA or debt collection industries ever again in June 2022. The New York State Attorney General piled on with its own legal action and secured a $77 million judgment against Richmond and affiliated entities in February 2024.
But the New York judgment was appealed and earlier this month the Appellate Division of the First Department issued its decision, ruling heavily in favor of the Attorney General. Some of its conclusions, while Richmond-circumstance specific, ought to be examined with a wider lens. Snippets of the Court’s rulings are as follows:
On Reconciliations
“Although the MCAs have mandatory reconciliation provisions, no reconciliation was performed in practice, even though it was supposed to be performed on a monthly basis, and daily payments were fixed and did not represent a good faith estimate of receivables; there is no persuasive evidence of any ad hoc incidents of reconciliation (upon a merchants’ request), which were subject to respondents’ “sole discretion,” and there is evidence that such requests were denied; bankruptcy was an express event of default in some of the MCAs, but even where it was not, repeated nonpayment was, as was breach of the MCAs, which was the case where a merchant “interrupt[ed], suspend[ed], dissolve[d] or terminate[d]” its business; and in the event of any of these circumstances, the full uncollected amount became due and respondents were empowered to enforce the personal guarantees they required the merchants to provide.
Usurious intent is also clear as a matter of law, as, absent reconciliation, the usurious interest rates can readily be calculated based on the information provided on the face of the MCAs.”
On Unconscionability
“The MCAs were also procedurally and substantively unconscionable. Substantive unconscionability is clear from the MCAs’ exorbitant and criminally usurious interest rates, among other things. As to procedural unconscionability, it is not dispositive that many, although not all, of the merchants were sophisticated businesspeople and all had prior experience with MCAs, and respondents misrepresented the terms and nature of the MCAs and used other high-pressure tactics.”
deBanked is not a law firm. To understand the implications of this legal decision, consult with attorneys experienced with the subject matter. For example: Hudson Cook, LLP, Murray Legal PLLC, or others listed here.
CAN Capital Adds Major Equipment Finance Division, New Product for Brokers to Offer
February 23, 2026
The synergy between the working capital and equipment finance industries continues to grow with CAN Capital’s latest acquisition. CAN acquired the equipment finance portfolio and platform of Republic Bank Finance and the division will continue to operate under the name of CAN Capital Equipment Finance. A press release announced the deal this morning.
CAN’s broker network and referral partners will be able to able to offer this product alongside CAN’s existing product suite.
“CAN has a large and established network of broker relationships, many of whom are already providing an equipment finance option to their small business customers,” said CAN Capital CEO Ed Siciliano to deBanked. “By adding an equipment finance product, we believe we will deepen our relationships and better serve our valued ISOs, especially those already offering this product.”
The equipment finance industry is massive. Recent valuations put it at $1.3 trillion annually.
In the official release, Siciliano said, “This acquisition is a natural extension of CAN Capital’s long-term growth strategy. We have built CAN Capital to be a scaled, durable platform that can grow both organically and through strategic acquisitions. Adding an equipment finance portfolio and platform enhances our product breadth, strengthens our market position, and allows us to serve more businesses with the right capital at the right time. This transaction reflects the momentum of our business and our continued confidence in the growth trajectory of CAN Capital.”
A Conference Tale: Broker Fair vs. deBanked CONNECT
February 11, 2026Before Broker Fair was ever decided upon as a conference name it had been put up on a whiteboard next to another possibility, Broker Fest. This was in mid-2017 when there was no guarantee that we’d ever get the chance to do more than one conference. Fair was ultimately chosen over Fest because it sounded more professional, like a job fair. Fest sounded like Spring Break and not the image I wanted. We also picked a date for this Broker Fair—May 14, 2018—and a venue. We chose to have it in New York City because the overwhelming majority of deBanked readers were located in the New York Tri-State area. The thought process was that it would be just a walk, drive, or train away for most attendees and they would not need to concern themselves with the cost of flights or hotels.
Although this is not widely known, the biggest problem we immediately faced was that we had been front-run. A competitor, someone from outside the industry, tried to strike first, and announced a conference custom-tailored to our audience for January 2018 in New York City, five months before ours. Having nearly a year to market and plan our first ever conference suddenly became a huge liability. As our advertisers got called and solicited to sponsor that instead of Broker Fair, we had been advised that we had already lost the war before ever even firing a shot.
But having been a regular on the conference circuit myself, I couldn’t help but think that New York City was a terrible place to invite people to in January. That got us thinking about a counter-offensive. Our data indicated that after New York, the Miami area contained the next highest concentration of deBanked readers. After that was Southern California. And after that was Toronto, Canada. By October 2017, we came up with a concept to do something smaller than a conference, a networking event focused simply on connections that didn’t necessarily have to be broker-branded. We called it deBanked CONNECT MIAMI. I believed that executing something like that would also build confidence in the market that we could attract a big crowd, a proof-of-concept so to speak for anyone unsure if deBanked’s online audience would convert to an in-person one. And so we rented out a rooftop bar in South Beach and scheduled the first deBanked CONNECT MIAMI to take place January 2018 (a good time to be in Florida), the same month as that other conference in New York. Our networking event was a smashing success, so much so that we got front-run AGAIN. Since our event was known to be on the rooftop, yet another newly announced rival rented out the bar on the ground floor to try and divert people away from ours to theirs. Thankfully it didn’t work. Meanwhile, our competitor in New York never had a second conference.
With the path seemingly cleared for Broker Fair, we apparently then irked the ire of Kris Roglieri, the head of NACLB, by saying that our conference would be “the largest gathering of merchant cash advance and business loan brokers in the country.” Although our audience and theirs did not overlap at the time, their email marketing shifted to throwing shade at us for no reason. It seemed, however, that it inadvertently helped us, because by March 30, 2018 we ran into another problem I had not imagined, we were already sold out. Sold out in that if the venue found out how many tickets we had sold versus how many they were physically allowed to have in the space, we were going to get in very big trouble sold out. This was 45 days before the conference!
Being sold out only increased the hype and I didn’t know what to do. Broker conferences didn’t sell out. That wasn’t a thing. Now it had legitimately happened. People noticed and the world began to change. Within two weeks, the National Association of Equipment Leasing Brokers changed its name to the American Association of Commercial Finance Brokers. They said the time had come to be more inclusive of all commercial finance brokers. Others would eventually follow suit.
After we managed to pull off Broker Fair 2018, with a lot of hiccups along the way, we decided that we’d continue to do smaller networking events, including Miami. They’d be deBanked CONNECT MIAMI, deBanked CONNECT San Diego, and deBanked CONNECT Toronto. We also decided to add content and speakers to the mix as well. deBanked CONNECT San Diego 2018 attracted 344 people while deBanked CONNECT MIAMI 2019 brought in 461, a number that shocked us because we had envisioned it as something small and the turnout was in fact very large. For a long time we underestimated registrations and we constantly had to contend with spaces that were too small and sold out signs on our website.
deBanked CONNECT MIAMI 2019 was also the first time we heard people refer to it as Broker Fair Miami. This I guess made sense, because that is what it was fast becoming, but to have every event mimic the New York format with a full day of speakers and pre-show party the night before seemed daunting so I hesitated to change the name of deBanked CONNECT MIAMI to Broker Fair Miami when the formats were slightly different. I also didn’t want to take away from New York being known as the “signature” conference. The demographics were essentially the same, however, and the Broker Fair name seemed to easily roll off the tongue. Americans showing up to deBanked CONNECT Toronto, for example, said that they were excited to be at Broker Fair Canada. deBanked CONNECT San Diego you say? That got referred to as Broker Fair San Diego.
The most striking moment of them all, however, happened after we moved all of our cryptocurrency content off into another brand, one we called deCashed instead of deBanked. deBanked’s wide variety of content had grown an entire following outside of just small business finance and resulted in the experiment of an entirely unrelated networking event in May 2022 called by the same name, deCashed. Although it had a large turnout from the crypto industry, and it was only about crypto, dozens of people from the small business lending space assumed it was effectively Broker Fair Bitcoin, with some attendees flying in from as far as Europe, Canada, and California to say they were excited to be at their first Broker Fair.
Alas, the only event truly called Broker Fair these days remains to be the annual show in New York City (next one is June 1, 2026). deBanked CONNECT MIAMI has now become the biggest of the year, however, surpassing every other event. deBanked CONNECT MIAMI is projected to have more than 1,000 attendees this week. Meanwhile, deBanked CONNECT Toronto got nixed due to Covid and deBanked CONNECT San Diego was replaced by B2B Finance Expo in Las Vegas. The latter one now being a collaboration with a major trade association.
Today, there’s a lot of new events popping up with the word Broker in the name. I’m not surprised. It’s a very important profession. And if you feel the urge to label deBanked CONNECT MIAMI as Broker Fair Miami, you’ll be forgiven. It just means that back in 2017 we did a really good job in picking a name that would stick. On the other hand, perhaps we goofed. It’s become obvious that inside of every deBanked CONNECT MIAMI is a little taste of getting away, like you’re going on Spring Break, something that feels more sensational than a fair. If only there were a word for what it could have been…
See you there.
