Who National Funding is built for
National Funding is a direct lender out of San Diego, operating since 1999, with two main products. There is a short-term working capital loan from $5,000 to $500,000, repaid by daily or weekly ACH, and equipment financing from $5,000 to $150,000 repaid monthly over two to five years. The advertised minimums are a 600 FICO, $250,000 in annual revenue, and six months in business.
Here is the catch worth knowing up front. National Funding's own site lists a 670 personal credit score when a personal guarantee is involved, and some sources report a two-year requirement specifically for equipment financing. So the 600 and six-month figures are the floor they advertise, not the bar they fund at.
Why National Funding really declines deals
The working capital loan repays by daily or weekly ACH, so the underwriting centers on your last three months of bank statements. It looks at your average daily balance, around a $1,500 cushion, your deposit consistency, and whether the account can absorb a fixed pull every business day. A business at $250,000 in revenue that gets paid in big, irregular chunks, common in seasonal and project work, can fail that test even though the annual number qualifies.
Two related triggers do a lot of declines. Recurring NSFs or negative balance days in that three-month window signal the account cannot sustain daily withdrawals. And if you already carry an advance or short-term loan, the combined daily debits leave no room for another, so stacked positions are a routine decline.
Equipment financing fails for different reasons. National Funding requires a formal equipment quote from a vendor, which is a hard procedural gate. Private-party purchases, soft costs, and deals without a vendor invoice do not fit. Declines also cluster around the collateral itself, when equipment is older, highly specialized and hard to resell, or comes from an unestablished vendor. With a two-to-five-year term, the equipment has to outlast the loan.
The most common reasons borrowers get declined by National Funding
- Seasonal or inconsistent revenue that cannot support a fixed daily or weekly ACH debit
- Negative bank days or NSF activity in the trailing three months
- An average daily balance too thin to absorb daily repayment
- Existing stacked advances leaving no remaining daily cash flow
- Credit below the practical bar, closer to 670 when a personal guarantee is involved
- For equipment, no vendor quote, or equipment that is used, aged, or hard to remarket
- A larger equipment purchase above the $150,000 cap
What to do next
Match the reason to the workaround and most National Funding declines have a clear answer. If lumpy revenue failed the daily-ACH test, lenders that underwrite bank-statement cash flow on weekly or monthly remittance, or revenue-based financing that flexes with your deposits, can fund the same business. If stacked debt was the issue, consolidation into a single longer-term payment frees up the daily cash flow that caused the decline, and our guide on funding with existing business debt covers it.
For equipment that did not fit, there are lenders with broader used-equipment, private-party, and soft-cost programs, and there is the option of working capital used to buy the equipment outright when the asset itself will not qualify as collateral. If the purchase is simply larger than $150,000, that ceiling is National Funding's, not the market's.
The equipment finance market is enormous and active. The Equipment Leasing and Finance Association reported the industry at roughly $1.3 trillion with new business volume growing in 2024, which means there is real appetite and a wide range of lenders beyond any single shop. And in the Federal Reserve's 2025 Small Business Credit Survey, a majority of applicants did not receive the full amount they sought, so a partial approval or a decline from one lender is a common starting point, not the end of the road.