Prequalifiying Merchants

A prequalified offer is an indicative funding amount that can be used to market to a merchant. These teaser offers can be presented in a few ways, for example:

Surfaced within your native application environment
Sent via scheduled or triggered email marketing (or direct mail)
Integrated into the workflow of your customer support team so they can discuss cash advance when they speak with your merchants

Prequalified offers can be calculated by providing YouLend with anonymised history of sales/ payments/ payouts (collectively known as "payment data") for a merchant. YouLend will return a result for each merchant indicating whether that merchant is eligible for cash advance or not, and if so for how much. This can be done via two routes:

Via Prequalification API
Via csv file exchange (usually SFTP server)

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Good to know
For a merchant to be prequalified a minimum of three months' data must be provided. YouLend recommend that partners share at least 12 months to get more accurate offers
Payment data should be shared as aggregated data, not transaction level data

Prequalification works at the level of individual card terminals or payment gateways. For merchants with multiple terminals or payment gateways, please provide data for each terminal and payment gateway separately. We refer to the legal entity-level as "customer level", and to terminal/ gateway-level as "location level". Once you have prequalified offers at location level, you can aggregate them by customer if that is more relevant for your marketing approach.

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Best practice
The prequalified amount is generally very close to the final offer. The fee and the repayment percentage ('sweep') are more likely to differ
At the prequalification stage, we recommend using only the highest funding amount from the prequalified offers as an enticement, without providing the detailed fee and repayment percentage
Example copy: You are prequalified for business funding of up to £27,400 based on your card sales. Apply here

Example prequalification file (csv)

CustomerId	Jun-24	Jul-24	Aug-24	Sep-24	Oct-24	Nov-24	Dec-24
1	£1,010	£6,024	£1,010	£6,024	£9,500	£6,024	£6,024
2	£2,501	£1,010	£9,500	£1,010	£1,010	£2,501	£9,500
3	£5,010	£6,024	£6,130	£2,501	£4,120	£1,010	£6,024
4	£9,500	£1,010	£1,010	£6,024	£6,024	£6,024	£2,501
5	£1,012	£7,510	£1,019	£7.016	£2,501	£1,010	£1,010
6	£2,913	£1,300	£2,501	£1,010	£6,024	£9,500	£6,024

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Important
There are certain industries which YouLend cannot fund. We recommend screening out merchants in these industries before data is sent to YouLend for prequalification. For a complete list of disallowed SIC codes, please see the Disallowed SIC Codes section in the General Guide.