What MCA leads cost in 2026
The merchant cash advance lead market prices in four tiers. Live transfers — a pre-qualified merchant patched directly to your floor — run $45 to $150+ each. Fresh exclusive web leads sold to a single buyer run $25 to $100. Shared leads sold to multiple floors are cheaper per record but divide every conversation by the competition. Aged leads, 30–90+ days old, sell for $0.05 to $25 and are viable only for high-volume dialers building nurture pipeline.
UCC and trigger lists sit alongside these tiers: public-record filing data (typically pennies to a few dollars per record) that identifies proven borrowers, best used for renewal and refinance campaigns rather than net-new demand.
- Live transfers — $45–$150+ per connected call
- Fresh exclusive leads — $25–$100 per lead
- Shared leads — $5–$25, sold to 5–12+ buyers
- Aged leads (30–90+ days) — $0.05–$25 per record
- UCC / trigger lists — pennies per row, resold broadly
- Intent-verified subscription feeds — ~$1–$2 per exclusive unlock (e.g., $99/mo for 100)
Cost per lead is the wrong metric
A $10 shared lead dialed by eight floors converts worse than a $1 exclusive lead nobody else holds — and both are beaten by a merchant who was comparing MCA offers this morning. The correct comparison is cost per funded deal: (lead cost + dialing labor) ÷ funded deals. Three variables dominate that equation. Freshness: funding intent decays in days, not weeks; a merchant who inquired last month has usually funded with someone. Exclusivity: every additional buyer of the same record divides your contact-to-close rate. Verifiability: if you cannot see why a lead is hot — the trigger, the date, the source — you are buying assertions.
Run the math on a typical month: 500 aged records at $5 ($2,500) with a 0.5% fund rate yields 2–3 deals. 100 exclusive intent-verified unlocks at $99 with a 4–6% fund rate yields 4–6 deals — at 1/25th the list spend and a fraction of the dialing hours.
Compliance is now a pricing variable
TCPA exposure has turned consent chains into a real cost. Aged and shared consumer-style inquiry data often carries unverifiable opt-in trails; a single willful violation can cost more than a year of lead spend. Public-record and first-party intent signals — UCC filings, licensing events, live web research — avoid the purchased-inquiry consent problem entirely. When comparing vendors, ask for the consent documentation in writing; if the answer is vague, price the risk in.
A 10-minute vendor checklist before you buy
Ask five questions. One: when did the intent event happen — show me the timestamp. Two: how many buyers receive this lead — get exclusivity in writing. Three: what evidence backs the lead — triggers with sources beat 'verified' claims. Four: what contact data ships with it — a verified owner mobile, or a company switchboard? Five: what does a test cost — prefer month-to-month subscriptions or pay-as-you-go bundles over long contracts, and validate against your own funded-deal KPIs within 14 days.
Indicato's approach: intent-verified, product-tagged leads with clickable evidence, exclusive assignment enforced at the database level, verified owner contacts, and self-serve plans from $99/month with a 7-day free trial — so the test costs an afternoon, not a quarter.
Glossary
- Live transfer
- A call-center-qualified merchant patched directly to a buyer's sales floor, billed per connected call.
- Aged lead
- A funding inquiry 30–90+ days old, resold at deep discount to multiple buyers.
- Cost per funded deal
- (Lead spend + dialing labor) ÷ funded deals — the only lead-buying metric that survives contact with reality.