Overview
Founded in 2013, QuarterSpot, is an alternative lender that offers short-term loans to small businesses. Unlike other short-term lenders, QuarterSpot loans are fully amortizing, which means that your daily or weekly payments go to both interest and principle. If you’re able to pay your loan ahead of schedule, you’ll be able to save on avoided interest without incurring a prepayment penalty. In other words, with QuarterSpot, you can actually save on interest by paying your loan back early.
QuarterSpot aims to help businesses thrive with quick and affordable funding that comes with attractive terms. QuarterSpot offers short-term loans in amounts ranging from $5,000 to $250,000. The lender offers 9, 12 and 18-month term loans with annual percentage rates ranging from 30% to 70%.
During the course of this QuarterSpot review we were impressed to discover that if you need fast financing for your small business, QuarterSpot could be a good fit. They rely heavily on technology to make quick and informed decisions about your eligibility, so you’ll have as little as 24 hours, to funding.
As long as you can prove financial stability with your bank statements, QuarterSpot allows you to use the funds for all business purposes. For this reason, customers come to QuarterSpot for their working capital as well as equipment financing needs.
This lender also offers the option of repaying on a weekly basis, an arrangement many merchants find easier to handle than the standard daily repayments common in the industry.
QuarterSpot is very flexible when it comes to loan requirements and they evaluate borrowers by analyzing their bank transaction history, essentially looking at it as a real-time profit-and-loss statement. This gives the lender a better understanding of the strength of a business. This means that even if you have bad or poor credit score, QuarterSpot may provide you the cash you need to run your business. Nevertheless, borrowers with good credit and strong business financials may qualify for better loan terms.
QuarterSpot’s loans are unsecured, so they don’t require collateral. but the company may go after your business assets if you default on your loan.
- No prepayment penalty
- Bad credit loans available
- Transparent terms and fees
- Funding within 24 hours
- High cost of borrowing
- Personal guarantee
- High origination fe
Services Offered & Types of Funding
- Type of funding – Small business loans / Equipment financing and leasing
- Age of business / Minimum time in business – 1 year + revenue of at least US$ 200K/year
- Loan amount – $5,000 – $250,000
- Minimum credit score – 550
- Time until funding – as little as 24 hours
- Repayment terms – 9-18 months
Types of Loans | Loan Amount | Loan Term | Time to Funds | Interest Rate |
---|---|---|---|---|
Short Term Loan | $5,000-250,000 | 9-18 months | As Soon as 24 Hours | 1.11 – 1.38 factor fee |
For businesses seeking a lender that offers speed, convenience and ease of qualifying, QuarterSpot is a good option.
Qualifying for a loan at a traditional bank takes time and requires you to have great credit and, often, collateral. QuarterSpot has an easy application process with minimal paperwork, high approval rates and funding in 24 hours. In exchange, QuarterSpot has higher borrowing costs than banks.
You can use QuarterSpot’s short-term loan to cover unexpected costs, finance a short-term project, or even capitalize on a new business opportunity. One of the main advantages that we saw when we conducted our research is that QuarterSpot doesn’t charge a prepayment fee, so you can pay back your loan early. In addition to that, instead of focusing on credit score, QuarterSpot uses a secure login to access three to 24 months of bank account transaction data, the company doesn’t do a hard credit pull, so applying for a loan won’t hurt your credit.
The industries most commonly funded by QuarterSpot include restaurants, professional offices (dentistry, law, physicians), automotive repair, and beauty salons.
QuarterSpot cannot fund businesses in the following industries:
- Administration of:
- education programs
- housing programs
- human resource programs
- public health programs
- management consulting services
- Agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting
- Financial investment
- Ambulatory health care services
- Motor vehicle wholesalers and dealers
- Boat dealers
- Business to business electronic markets
- Business, professional, labor, or political organizations
- Collections agencies
- Credit intermediation and related activities
- Fire protection
- Insurance carriers
- Logging and tree production
- Nonresidential property managers
- Telecommunications
- Rail transportation
Rates and Fees
QuarterSpot charges a flat fee instead of a variable interest rate. This means that the amount you have to repay is determined ahead of time. For example, if you are borrowing $50K, and you have a flat fee of 1.25, you will have to repay $62.5K ($50,000 x 1.25 = $62,500). Repayments are made on a daily or weekly basis and are directly debited from your business bank account.
QuarterSpot flat fee rates range between 1.1 to 1.4. That means that for every dollar borrowed, you’ll have to repay between $1.10 and $1.40.
QuarterSpot charges an origination fee of 6 – 9%. These fees are charged as part of the “cost” of processing and managing your loan. We encourage you to specifically check these fees before signing any agreement with this lender.
One thing to know about a QuarterSpot loan is that it’s a fully amortizing loan. While other lenders penalize you by charging a fixed amount of interest even if you pay off your loan early, there’s no prepayment penalty, so you won’t be charged extra for paying your loan off early. In fact, you’ll avoid interest payments if you pay your loan off early.
Borrower Qualifications
QuarterSpot offers small business loans to companies in almost every corner of the country. However, QuarterSpot does not work with businesses that are based in: North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Vermont. In addition to this, QuarterSpot does not work with businesses that operate out of a home address and that have more than 5 NSF days in a three-month period.
QuarterSpot does not check your business credit score and any business owner can apply for funding with QuarterSpot.
Basic requirements to get a business loan through QuarterSpot include:
- Minimum of 12 months in business
- Minimum of 2 employees
- Gross revenue averaging at least $200,000 ($16,000/month)
- 3 months business bank statements must be provided
- A voided business check
- Copy of your driver’s license
- QuarterSpot requires you have a business bank account that has a minimum average balance of $2,000 and at least 10 monthly deposits.
- QuarterSpot will not lend to borrowers who have declared bankruptcy in the past 2 years.
- $100,000 or less in tax liens.
- QuarterSpot requires borrowers to own at least 50% of the business in question.
QuarterSpot requires a personal guarantee, which puts your personal assets on the line if you default on your loan. And while it doesn’t require a lien upfront, if you default on the loan, the company reserves the right to file a UCC lien on the business, which essentially means you’re putting up your business as collateral.
Application Process
You begin the process by applying via the QuarterSpot’s website, where you will be asked to submit basic information about yourself and your business. Once you’ve submitted basic information about your finance, including your social security number and last three months of business bank statements, QuarterSpot will conditionally approve you for underwriting. QuarterSpot only performs a soft pull on your credit, which will not have an impact on your score.
When you’ve submitted all the necessary documentation, your information will be sent to the underwriting department. An underwriter will look over your information and make the final decision regarding terms and fees. In certain circumstances, QuarterSpot might ask for more information before making their decision. A loan offer should arrive within 24 hours following the receipt of all the requested information. QuarterSpot will send you a link to an approval form that will allow you to make adjustments to elements like the amount you’re borrowing, your term length, and payment frequency. If you’re satisfied with the terms of the loan, you can review the legal and formal terms and conditions of the loan and sign the document electronically. If you receive and accept an offer from them, QuarterSpot can deposit the funds in your bank account in less than an hour.
The time from application to funding normally takes two or three days, largely depending upon how long it takes for you to submit the necessary documentation. If QuarterSpot rejects your application, you’ll be able to re-apply after 60 days.
Help & Support
QuarterSpot’s headquarters are centrally located in California. You can reach QuarterSpot by phone, email or through their website. You can also interact with QuarterSpot on Twitter. QuarterSpot’s staff are passionate about helping small business owners. They’re quick to answer and listen to their customers to solve true financial needs, and their focus is 100% on offering customers fast, painless, and affordable loans.
QuarterSpot has a FAQ page to answer your questions about its loan process and you can find customer testimonials section of their website that provides real examples of how QuarterSpot loans have benefited small businesses.
User Reviews
During this QuarterSpot review it was surprising to see that the company has only 19 reviews on the website Trustpilot, with 79% of them giving QuarterSpot an “excellent” 5-star rating. Of the 5-star reviews, the claim was primarily due to ease of applying, transparency, and customer support along with a secure online process and a great renewal department that communicates with you as your portfolio grows, making it easy to qualify for more capital when you need it. We further analyzed the 2 (out of 19) bad (one star) QuarterSpot reviews and it seems that the main concern is related to the high cost of the loan, which is something that we have mentioned during our review as well, but this shouldn’t come as a surprise to the borrower. Though many other lenders have more reviews out there, the low number of reviews shouldn’t necessarily be a negative sign – it could just mean that the company isn’t aggressively pursuing reviews at this time, or that its borrowers are more focused on building their businesses than writing reviews.
We also looked at the A+ ranking granted to QuarterSpot by the BBB which is a very good indicator of the company’s professionalism.
Final Thoughts
If you need fast financing for your small business, QuarterSpot could be a good fit. They rely heavily on technology to make quick and informed decisions about your eligibility, so you’ll have a fast time to funding.
Though QuarterSpot has a minimum FICO requirement of 550 for a personal credit score,
Instead of focusing heavily on credit score, QuarterSpot also looks at your recent bank transactions to get a fuller picture of your company’s finances. Your bank statements are reviewed as a real-time profit-and-loss statement, which gives the lender a better understanding of the strength of a business. The company doesn’t do a hard credit pull, so applying for a loan won’t hurt your credit.
We especially appreciated that QuarterSpot loans are fully amortizing. This lets the borrower save on interest by paying back the loan early. The company doesn’t charge a prepayment penalty.
We would not recommend QuarterSpot for every business, because the flat borrowing fees are very expensive. However, because QuarterSpot has eliminated some of the pain points of borrowing money for such a short period of time, this lender is worth considering if you don’t have access to less expensive forms of debt.