Florida MCA Disclosure Law: What Funders Must Reveal
Florida now requires MCA funders to disclose financing costs upfront. Here's what the law covers, what it misses, and what actually fixes stacked debt.
A New Disclosure Law Just Changed What Your MCA Funder Owes You
Picture this: you’re sitting across from a funder in 2026, about to sign for another advance to smooth out cash flow, and for the first time they hand you a form spelling out the total dollar cost of the deal before you sign anything. That’s not customer service. That’s the law now — at least in Florida, and in a growing list of states following the same playbook.
If you’re a business owner anywhere in the country dealing with merchant cash advance debt, this matters to you even if you never set foot in Florida. Funders operate nationwide, and disclosure requirements like Florida’s are reshaping what gets put in writing before ink hits paper. But here’s the part that matters most, and the part most coverage of these laws skips: disclosure rules are brand new, they only apply going forward, and they do absolutely nothing for the stacked advances you already signed.
This article breaks down what Florida’s Commercial Financing Disclosure Law actually requires, where it still leaves business owners exposed, and — more importantly — what actually fixes debt that’s already on the books. There’s real momentum here, and real options. Let’s get into it.
What Florida's Commercial Financing Disclosure Law Actually Requires
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 1353 in 2023, creating the Florida Commercial Financing Disclosure Law (FCFDL) as a new part of Chapter 559 of the Florida Statutes. It took effect for commercial financing transactions of $500,000 or less consummated on or after January 1, 2024 — and merchant cash advances are explicitly covered, right alongside commercial loans, open-end credit plans, and accounts receivable purchase agreements.
Before or at the moment a deal closes, funders now have to hand over a written disclosure that spells out:
- The total dollar amount being advanced or financed
- The total dollar cost of the financing
- The total repayment amount over the life of the deal
- The payment amount and how often payments are due (daily, weekly, or otherwise)
- An estimated term length
- Any additional fees or charges baked into the deal
The law also bars brokers from collecting advance fees before a deal is placed — a real win, since upfront broker fees have been a common complaint from owners who paid for financing that never materialized. This is a meaningful step forward for transparency, and it’s part of why we love watching this industry get more accountable. But it’s not the whole story.
Why "Total Cost Disclosed" Doesn't Mean "Cost You Understand"
Here’s the catch: Florida’s law requires funders to disclose the total dollar cost of financing. It does not require them to disclose an annual percentage rate. That distinction sounds technical, but it changes everything about how the number lands.
Say a business takes a $100,000 advance at a 1.38 factor rate. The disclosure shows a $138,000 total repayment and a $38,000 financing charge — a number that, on paper, doesn’t sound catastrophic. But if that advance gets repaid over five months through daily debits, the effective annualized cost of that money is well north of 90%. The dollar figure is accurate. The picture it paints is not the full picture, because nothing on the form does the annualizing math for you.
This gap isn’t an accident of drafting — it’s the same tension regulators have been chasing for years. The Federal Trade Commission’s enforcement actions against several large MCA funders alleged that businesses were misled about how much financing would actually cost and how much would actually be advanced. Disclosure laws like Florida’s are a direct response to that pattern. They’re progress. They are not a cap, a ceiling, or a guarantee that the deal in front of you is a good one.
The Nationwide Patchwork Every Funder Now Navigates
Florida isn’t operating alone here, and neither is any funder that lends across state lines. New York was first out of the gate back in 2020 with its own commercial financing disclosure law, followed by California, Utah, and Virginia. Florida and Georgia joined in 2023, with Connecticut and Kansas adopting similar frameworks not long after. If you’re running a business anywhere in the country and your funder is based in, or does business in, any of these states, disclosure obligations may already apply to your deal whether you knew it or not.
This state-by-state approach mirrors a broader federal push for transparency in small business lending. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s work under Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act is aimed at collecting better data on small business credit, precisely because so little standardized information has existed in this market. And the Federal Reserve’s Small Business Credit Survey has repeatedly found that owners who turn to online and alternative funders often do so because they were denied by a bank — and often don’t fully grasp the repayment terms until the daily debits start hitting.
None of this means the industry is being shut down. It means it’s being forced into the light, one state at a time. That’s good for business owners, and it’s exactly the kind of accountability groups like the National Federation of Independent Business have pushed for on behalf of their members for years.
What These Laws Don't Fix: Debt You Already Owe
Here’s the reality check, and it’s the one thing every headline about these new laws leaves out: disclosure requirements are prospective. They apply to deals signed on or after the law’s effective date. If you’re carrying four or five stacked advances signed in 2022, 2023, or even early in 2024 before your specific funder or deal size fell under the rule, none of this paperwork retroactively fixes what you already owe.
That’s not a loophole — it’s just how disclosure law works everywhere. And it’s exactly why disclosure and restructuring are two completely different tools. A disclosure form tells you what a new deal costs before you sign it. It says nothing about how to unwind advances you’re already locked into. For that, you need a negotiated resolution: a structured plan, a lump-sum settlement, or in more severe cases, a formal hardship request directly to your funders.
The mechanics matter here. A reconciliation clause in your original contract may already give you a legal path to request a temporary reduction in your daily debit if revenue has genuinely dropped — most owners never invoke it because they don’t know it’s there. Beyond that, structured negotiation with each funder, addressed in the right order, is how six-figure stacked balances actually come down. Nobody hands you that path in a disclosure form. It takes a specialist who does this work daily.
A Composite Case: Stacked Advances Meet a Negotiated Resolution
Consider a composite scenario built from patterns we’ve seen play out across the country: a Central Florida trucking company took on its first advance to cover a slow freight season, then stacked three more over the following year just to keep up with the daily debits from the first. By the time the owner reached out for help, four funders were pulling a combined $2,400 a day from the business’s account, against total balances of roughly $210,000.
None of those four advances were covered by any disclosure law — they were signed before Florida’s rule took effect, and the paperwork the owner had barely explained what the real cost of the money was. What actually moved the needle wasn’t a form. It was a structured negotiated resolution with each funder, prioritized by position and leverage, that brought the total obligation down to roughly $65,000 — a reduction of about 70% from the original stacked balance. Results vary and are not guaranteed, and every negotiation depends on the specific funders, contracts, and circumstances involved, but this is the kind of outcome that’s possible with the right approach.
What to Do Next: Read the Disclosure, Then Call a Specialist
If you’re shopping for new financing anywhere in the country, take the disclosure form seriously — read the total cost, the repayment schedule, and the term length before you sign anything, and don’t assume a missing APR means a missing cost. Do the annualized math yourself, or have someone do it for you, before you commit to another daily debit.
But if you’re already carrying stacked advances, the disclosure conversation isn’t the one that helps you. The conversation that helps is the one about restructuring what you already owe. We’ve seen balances brought down 70%, 80%, even more in past negotiated settlements, and past performance does not predict future results, but the pattern is real and it’s worth exploring before you consider taking on another advance to cover the ones you already have.
This information addresses commercial business debt and is not consumer debt advice, and it isn’t a substitute for advice tailored to your specific situation — creditors may not always agree to proposed terms, and every situation is different. Speak with an MCA Relief Specialist or a business attorney before your next move. There’s a way through stacked MCA debt that doesn’t involve signing for another one, and the sooner you make that call, the more options are still on the table.
Photo credits: Featured image by Tim van der Kuip on Unsplash; Section 1 by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash; Section 2 by Guille B on Unsplash; Section 3 by Aaron Lefler on Unsplash; Section 4 by Veronica on Unsplash; Section 5 by Masjid MABA on Unsplash; Section 6 by DEZALB on Pixabay; Section 7 by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash.