Merchant cash advance (MCA) and specialty lending live in the grey space between speed and certainty. You need to move fast to win a deal—but if you move too fast with thin data, you inherit returns, defaults, and regulatory pain. Traditional bank-data aggregators helped the industry get online, but they weren’t built for underwriter-grade clarity, multi-signal fraud defense, or collections-aware risk modeling.
Liftoff’s underwriting solutions were. We combine bank verification, enriched cash-flow analytics, identity & business verification (KYC/KYB), OFAC/sanctions screening, device & behavioral risk, and ACH/RTP portfolio telemetry—in one platform. The result is fewer bad approvals, fewer NSF returns, and a faster path to “fund with confidence.”
Why legacy tools fall short for MCA & lenders
Plaid, Decision Logic, and similar tools make it easy to connect bank accounts and fetch balances or transactions. That’s useful—but underwriting for MCA and high-velocity SMB lending requires more than a balance snapshot:
· Collections-aware view: You need to know if this merchant’s cash cycles can sustain your debit cadence, not just that a balance was positive at 9:03 AM.
· Return-risk prediction: It’s not enough to confirm routing/account numbers—you must anticipate the probability of R01/R02 returns under your schedule.
· Signal triangulation: Bank data alone misses synthetic identities, mule patterns, device farms, and cross-portfolio behaviors.
· Actionable evidence: Underwriters need clear, exportable artifacts for approvals, declines, and audits—not raw JSON.
Liftoff was designed to close those gaps.
The Liftoff underwriting stack (built for lenders)
1) Bank account verification that goes beyond “connected”
· Owner & match: Validate account ownership against the business applicant and principals; flag mismatches or recently opened accounts.
· Balance & volatility: Pull available balance plus volatility bands (p10/p50/p90) and detect end of-day “window dressing.”
· Routing/account sanity checks: Luhn, ACH formatting, and domestic eligibility; automatically exclude pseudo-accounts and prepaid patterns.
· Deposit-side analysis: Identify true revenue sources vs. circular inflows, peer-to-peer pass-throughs, and high-risk counterparties.
2) Cash-flow analytics tuned for debits and renewals
· Cadence fit score: Simulate your proposed debit frequency and amount against trailing 90–180 days of cash flow to forecast collision with rent, payroll, and tax outflows.
· Seasonality detection: Retailers and contractors don’t cash-flow like restaurants. We surface seasonal troughs that can spike your return rate.
· Revenue normalization: Tag merchant-processing deposits, platform payouts, and recurring customer inflows to isolate true operating revenue.
· Change-point alerts: Detect sudden declines, new liens, or disappearing counterparties —signals of stress before the first repayment.
3) KYC/KYB + OFAC that underwriters can defend
· Business identity graph: Secretary of State data, UBO/principal linkage, address history, DBAs, NAICS/SIC mapping, and watchlists.
· Sanctions & adverse media: OFAC/SDN and global lists with ongoing monitoring; PEP screening where required.
· Document intelligence: Auto-classification and tamper checks on bank statements, voided checks, IDs; image forensics for edited PDFs.
· Risk tiers, not gotchas: We score each axis and explain why, so you can escalate or approve with context.
4) Device, behavioral, and network risk
· Device fingerprinting: Identify emulators, headless browsers, and repeated device clusters across unrelated applications.
· Velocity controls: IP/phone/email reuse across your funnel; applicant appears in other lenders’ risk networks (where enabled by partners).
· Behavior signals: Timing anomalies, copy-paste patterns in forms, and impossible travel on a single application.
5) ACH/RTP portfolio telemetry (your unfair advantage)
Most tools stop at verification. Liftoff continues into collections and disbursements, feeding real performance back into underwriting:
· Return-rate predictors: We train on actual R01/R02/R03/R08 outcomes, dunning effectiveness, and merchant verticals to predict return risk under your cadence.
· Retry advisories: If a debit fails, we recommend when and how to retry (amount split, weekday vs. weekend) to lower your return count without spiking complaints.
· Funding readiness: Check RTP eligibility, bank RTP readiness, and limits before you promise “instant funding.”
Clearer than bank-data alone: how Liftoff compares
We’re not anti-aggregator—Liftoff can ingest Plaid, MX, Finicity, or raw statements. We’re pro-underwriting clarity:
· Richer context: We interpret transactions in the lens of daily/weekly debits, not just category labels.
· Fraud defense: Device + identity + document forensics catch patterns that pure bank connections miss.
· Decision artifacts: You get an Underwriter Pack—ownership proof, OFAC/KYB checks, cash-flow simulation, RTP readiness, and a neatly summarized Approval/Decline Rationale.
· Closed loop: Post-funding outcomes (returns, charge disputes, cure rates) retrain the model, so your approvals improve month over month.
What your team sees (and why it’s faster)
· One application view: Applicant details, business entity proof, bank verification, sanctions results, device risk, and statement intelligence in a single dashboard.
· Explainable risk score: A composite score with reason codes—e.g., “High weekday payroll collision risk,” “Owner mismatch,” “Volatile balance bands.”
· Scenario testing: Tweak advance size and debit cadence; watch the risk score update instantly based on cash-flow fit.
· Webhook-first: Push decisions and checklists into your LOS/CRM; require second approver for edge cases.
Fraud patterns we regularly stop
· Account washing: Temporary transfers to spike the balance before connection—caught via volatility and counterparty analysis.
· Synthetic identity: Thin file + brand-new checking + disposable device/IP cluster— flagged by identity and device graph.
· Statement tampering: Edited PDFs, mismatched fonts/objects, or metadata inconsistent with the bank—blocked by document forensics.
· Mule networks: Shared devices/emails across unrelated businesses—interdicted via network/velocity controls.
Compliance comfort (and audit docs you can save)
· NACHA-aligned: SEC-code-correct authorizations and notices; rolling return-rate monitoring with alert thresholds.
· Sanctions diligence: OFAC/SDN checks retained with timestamps; ongoing monitoring for renewals.
· Privacy & data minimization: Tokenization at rest, strict purpose-bound retention, and least-privilege access controls.
· Reg-friendly exports: Downloadable Underwriter Evidence Packs for each file.
Implementation: from pilot to portfolio
1. Scope & map: Define your verticals, average ticket, and repayment cadence; select verification + fraud modules.
2. Integrate: Use Liftoff’s Underwriting API for KYB/KYC, bank data ingestion, and risk scoring; enable web hooks for decision states.
3. Run a shadow pilot: Score incoming apps alongside your current process; compare declines/approvals and post-funding returns.
4. Turn on decisioning: Start with “approve/decline with reason codes,” then automate clear approvals while routing edge cases to human underwriters.
5. Retrain on outcomes: We incorporate your real returns and cures to lower loss rates and reduce false declines.
Time to value is measured in days, not quarters.
Example impact (conservative illustration)
· Before Liftoff: 12% 60-day return rate on new originations; $0.25 per inbound debit; modest synthetic-ID fraud slippage.
· After Liftoff:
o Returns down to 8–9% via cadence fit and better bank/owner verification.
o $0 inbound (if using Liftoff collections) removes per-item fees immediately.
o Fraud loss down 30–50% on new apps with device + document forensics.
o Decision cycle time ↓ 40% using explainable scores and scenario testing.
Across a 1,000-deal month, the combined savings can eclipse six figures—while improving borrower experience.
Why Liftoff is the best option for MCA & lenders
o Underwriter-grade clarity: Not just “connected”—explained, evidenced, and ready for audit.
o Fraud stack that keeps pace: Device, behavior, document, network, and sanctions signals in one place.
o Collections-aware by design: Risk is modeled against your debit cadence, not generic spend categories.
o Closed-loop learning: Real ACH/RTP performance continuously improves decisioning.
o $0 inbound option: If you use Liftoff for collections, you can remove inbound per-item costs and compound ROI.
FAQs
How is Liftoff Platform better than “Plaid or Decision Logic”?
Those tools are great bank-connect pipes. Liftoff ingests that data (or raw statements) and adds underwriting interpretation, fraud signals, KYB/OFAC, device risk, cash-flow simulation for your cadence, and outcome-driven retraining—plus downloadable evidence packs.
Do we have to replace our current aggregator?
No. You can keep Plaid/MX and let Liftoff enrich and score the data. Many lenders switch to our native verification later for lower friction and deeper signals.
Can Liftoff work as a backup ACH provider too?
Yes. Many clients use us as backup ACH (and RTP for weekend/holiday funding). If you enable Liftoff collections, you can also run $0 inbound to cut unit costs.
What about higher-risk industries?
We underwrite programs with appropriate controls: enhanced verification, lower initial exposure, and closer return-rate monitoring. Our fraud stack is designed to spot mule/synthetic patterns common in high-risk cohorts.
How quickly can we pilot?
Most teams stand up a shadow pilot in a week: connect the API, route applications for scoring, and compare decisions/outcomes against your baseline.
What artifacts do we get for audits?
A single Underwriter Evidence Pack: KYB/KYC results, OFAC hits (or clears), bank ownership proof, cash-flow simulation, device/doc forensics, and the final decision with reason codes and timestamps.
Ready to underwrite with confidence?
Give your team the clarity and controls they need—fewer bad approvals, fewer returns, less fraud, faster decisions. Talk to a Liftoff underwriting specialist, set up a one-week pilot, and see your risk metrics improve in real time.