How to fund ecommerce inventory without giving up equity

Most advice about startup funding assumes you're raising a round. If you're running an ecommerce or CPG brand, that advice is often beside the point: you don't need a board seat's worth of dilution to pay for a container of inventory before Q4. You need cash that shows up before your supplier's payment terms run out, and you need it without giving away equity you'll want later.

The good news is that a real, non-dilutive financing market has grown up specifically for this problem. The less good news is that it's scattered across half a dozen companies with different underwriting models, different eligibility bars and almost no published pricing, which makes it hard to compare them from the outside. This is a practical map of what exists today, who actually qualifies, and where each option tends to fit.

Why "raise a round" is the wrong default for inventory

Venture money is priced for risk a working capital lender doesn't take on. If your problem is "I know exactly how many units of this SKU I'll sell next quarter, I just don't have the cash to buy them yet," that's not product risk or market risk — it's a timing problem. Lenders and revenue-based financing providers can underwrite timing problems far more cheaply than a VC can underwrite product risk, because they're looking at your actual sales data, not your pitch deck.

That's also why these providers all want to see the same three things before they'll talk numbers: a track record of sales (usually 6+ months), a connected sales or payment platform they can read directly, and US incorporation with a US business bank account. If you're pre-revenue or pre-incorporation, this whole category isn't for you yet — go read Incorporate your startup and Claim your startup credits first.

Revenue-based financing: funding against your own sales data

Clearco 🧾 ServicePaid

Non-dilutive revenue-based financing up to $10M for US direct-to-consumer ecommerce brands.

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Clearco funds US direct-to-consumer ecommerce brands against their own revenue instead of taking equity. The company's own site advertises non-dilutive funding up to $10 million, structured as Fixed Funding Capacity, Rolling Funding Capacity, a Cash Advance or Invoice Funding, with repayment terms of up to about 12 months. To qualify you need at least six months of consistent revenue over $100,000 a month, US incorporation and an active US business bank account. You apply by connecting a sales platform — Shopify, Amazon, Stripe or PayPal — so Clearco can read your numbers directly rather than asking for a deck. Clearco doesn't publish its rates; it says pricing is based on your business's performance and can improve the more you repay successfully, so get a written offer before you compare it to anything else on this list.

The practical takeaway: Clearco is built for a brand that already has real monthly revenue and wants funding sized to that revenue without a credit committee asking for a personal guarantee. It is not a fit for a pre-revenue launch or a B2B SaaS company; this product is specifically tuned to ecommerce sales patterns.

Banking and a credit line that grows with your payouts

Highbeam 🧾 ServiceFreemium

Banking, high-yield savings and a revenue-based credit line built for US ecommerce brands.

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Highbeam takes a different angle: instead of a single financing product, it's a full banking relationship — checking and savings through Thread Bank, a revolving credit line, and cash-back cards — built around the reality that an ecommerce brand's biggest asset is its payout history. The credit line is sized dynamically, starting around 15 days of your ecommerce payout revenue and growing to about a month's worth as your sales grow, priced as a flat APR that isn't published up front. On the banking side, Highbeam advertises no monthly fees, no minimum balance, and a deposit sweep program offering up to 3.52% APY with as much as $3M in FDIC coverage (rates are variable and tied to the federal funds rate, so confirm the current number before you move money).

This is worth comparing against Mercury or Brex if you're an ecommerce brand specifically, because neither of those two sizes a credit line off your payout data the way Highbeam does — they're built for a broader range of startups, not ecommerce specifically. If you haven't picked a primary bank yet, read Open a business bank account before you decide between any of these.

AP automation and financing tied to your purchase orders

Settle 🧾 ServiceFreemium

Free AP automation for CPG/ecommerce brands, plus non-dilutive inventory financing from $20K to $15M.

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🔥 Settle Launch plan: free AP automation with no transaction fees; inventory financing from $20K to $15M, non-dilutive

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Settle attacks the same cash-timing problem from the supplier side. Its software is genuinely free at the Launch tier (collecting bills, routing approvals, matching invoices to POs and receipts, and calculating landed cost — materials, freight, packaging, duties — before you pay); Accelerate adds more automation for $199/month with no added transaction fees. Separately, Settle offers inventory financing against your own payables and purchasing data, ranging from $20,000 to $15 million, with approval reported in days rather than weeks. Like Clearco, Settle calls this non-dilutive, and like Clearco, it doesn't publish rates or fees on its public site — you need a written quote to actually compare it.

What makes Settle worth a separate look from Clearco is the landed-cost calculation. If you're importing goods and guessing at duties and freight in a spreadsheet, that's the single easiest place to be wrong about your actual margin, and it's the first thing Settle automates even on the free tier — before you ever touch the financing product.

What a provider is actually underwriting

It helps to know what's happening on the other side of the application before you fill one out. These providers aren't evaluating your idea, your team or your market size the way a venture investor would — they're running an algorithm against your transaction history. For Clearco and Highbeam, that means connecting a sales or payout platform and letting their systems read months of actual revenue, refund rates and order volume. For Settle, it's your purchase orders and payables history. The output is a number: how much they're comfortable advancing, and what it will cost you to carry that advance until it's repaid.

This is why the eligibility bars are oddly specific — "six months of revenue over $100,000 a month," not "any startup with traction." Below that bar, the data series is too short or too thin for the algorithm to price confidently, and you'll either get rejected outright or offered a much smaller amount than you were hoping for. If you're below that line, a business credit card, a line of credit from whichever bank holds your operating account, or a founder-funded buffer is probably your realistic option until your sales history catches up.

Questions worth asking before you sign

Because none of these companies publish rates, the real comparison shopping happens after you apply, not before. A few questions are worth asking every provider you talk to, in writing:

• What is the total cost expressed as an APR, not just a flat fee or a discount rate? Flat fees on short-term advances can translate into APRs well above what the headline number suggests once you annualize them.
• Is there a personal guarantee? Non-dilutive financing is supposed to mean you keep your equity, but some structures still ask a founder to personally guarantee repayment. Know which kind you're signing.
• What happens if a sales month is weak? Revenue-based repayment that flexes with your sales is very different from a fixed daily or weekly debit that doesn't care whether you had a slow month.
• Is there a prepayment penalty? If your margins improve and you want to pay an advance off early to cut the cost, make sure doing so doesn't cost you more than just letting it run.
• Does taking this financing affect anything else you're planning, such as an SBA loan, a line of credit, or a future equity round where a lender's lien on receivables might need to be disclosed or subordinated?

None of this is a reason to avoid the category — it's a reason to get two offers in writing and actually read the definitions section before you pick one.

If you're outside the US

Every provider in this piece is built around US incorporation, a US EIN and a US bank account, which is the honest limitation of this whole category right now: if you're running a UK, EU or Canadian ecommerce brand, Clearco, Highbeam and Settle as described here aren't an option. Canadian founders doing real technology development alongside their ecommerce operation should still look at NRC IRAP for non-dilutive advisory and project funding, and EU-based founders building the technology behind a commerce product can check eligibility for the EIC Accelerator's blended grant-and-equity funding. Neither is a substitute for inventory financing, but both are real non-dilutive money that's easy to overlook because they're filed under "deep tech" rather than "ecommerce."

Where this fits in your overall funding stack

None of this replaces a priced round if you genuinely need venture-scale capital for R&D, headcount or a long runway with no revenue yet. It's specifically for the gap between "I have sales" and "I have the cash on hand to buy more of what's selling." A reasonable order of operations for a growing ecommerce brand:

A few things to watch across all of them. First, none of these publish real rates on their marketing pages — every single one of them routes you to a written offer or a sales call before you see an actual number, so budget time for that step and don't commit before you've seen it in writing. Second, "non-dilutive" doesn't mean "free" — it means you're not giving up equity, but you are paying a cost of capital, and that cost comes straight out of the same margin you'd use to reinvest in inventory. Model the repayment into your cash flow the same way you'd model a loan, because structurally that's what it is. Third, revenue-based financing and inventory financing both want to see real, verifiable sales data connected directly to a platform — if your bookkeeping is a mess, a provider's underwriting algorithm will see that before a human ever does, so it's worth getting your books in order first.

What to do this week

If you're a US ecommerce or CPG brand with real monthly revenue and an upcoming inventory order you can't quite cash-flow, the fastest path is: open an account with whichever bank fits your stage (check the banking directory if you haven't picked one), connect your sales platforms, and get written quotes from at least two of the financing options above before you commit to either one. The rates aren't published for a reason — providers price risk individually — so the only way to know which one is actually cheaper for your business is to make them compete for your application.

For the funding step more broadly, including equity options once you outgrow this category, see Raise funding and Take payments for the processing side of the same cash-flow problem. And if pricing your actual product is still an open question before any of this matters, Monetizes has the deeper playbook on turning usage into revenue in the first place.