You don't need a physical location to qualify. Online-only stores, SaaS products and digital service businesses are funded on revenue, not real estate — funders underwrite the deposits moving through your business bank account. Most online-friendly funders will look at a file from around six months in business with consistent monthly deposits.
A storefront is not a requirement
Plenty of funders fund e-commerce shops, Amazon and Shopify sellers, dropshippers, agencies, and software businesses that have never had a brick-and-mortar address. What they underwrite is your cash flow — the deposits moving through your business bank account — not whether customers can walk through a door.
If your sales settle into a business checking account and you have a few months of history, you have the core of what most online-friendly funders need to make an offer.
What funders look at for a digital business
Revenue consistency comes first: steady monthly deposits matter more than any single big month. From there, time in business (even 6–12 months can be enough), your average balances, and how many deposits you receive each month all factor in.
Some funders will also consider your platform data — Stripe, PayPal, Shopify, or marketplace payouts — alongside bank statements. That can actually help a young online business show momentum that a traditional bank statement alone might understate.
Funding products that fit online revenue
Revenue-based financing and short-term working capital are common fits because repayment can track your sales. A line of credit is excellent for inventory-heavy sellers who need to buy stock ahead of a busy period and repay as it sells. For a product-by-product comparison written specifically for online sellers, see our guide to the best ecommerce business funding.
Equipment financing can cover cameras, computers, or warehouse gear, and term loans suit larger, planned investments once you have a longer track record. If you sell through a marketplace rather than your own storefront, our guide to merchant cash advances for ecommerce covers how platform payout data is used in underwriting.
Why competition matters more online
Traditional banks are often the slowest to get comfortable with a no-storefront business. By shopping your file to the right funders, The Broker Shop finds the ones that already understand e-commerce and digital revenue — so you are matched with funders fluent in your model instead of explaining it to a skeptical loan officer.
Can online businesses get small business loans?
Yes. Online-only businesses qualify for the same core products as any other small business — term loans, lines of credit, revenue-based financing and equipment financing. What changes is who says yes. Underwriting looks at deposits into your business bank account, not at whether you hold a lease, so an e-commerce store with steady settlement volume reads as a normal file.
The practical difficulty is not eligibility, it is which door you knock on. Traditional banks generally underwrite against collateral, tax returns and a longer operating history, and a no-storefront business with inventory sitting in a third-party warehouse fits that model awkwardly. Online and fintech funders were built around exactly this profile, and the market has moved with it: in the Federal Reserve Banks' Small Business Credit Survey, the share of applicants that sought financing at online lenders rose from 17% in the 2020 survey to 29% in the 2025 survey.
Being realistic about outcomes helps too. Across all small employer firms that applied for financing in that survey, 42% received the full amount they sought, 36% received some or most of it, and 22% received none. A partial approval is the most common single outcome after a full one, so it is worth deciding in advance what you would do with 60% of the amount you asked for.
How to get a loan to buy an online business
Buying an existing online business is a different transaction from funding the one you already run, and it is underwritten differently. An acquisition is judged mainly on the target's financials — verifiable revenue, margin, customer concentration, platform dependency — plus your own experience and how much of the purchase price you are covering yourself. Revenue-based products generally do not fit, because there is no trading history in your entity yet to advance against.
The usual route is an SBA 7(a) loan, which can be used for business acquisition and is the product most often used to buy a small online business. The SBA does not lend directly; it guarantees loans made by participating lenders, which is why the documentation load and the timeline are closer to a bank's than to an online funder's. Expect to produce the seller's tax returns and profit-and-loss statements, a purchase agreement, and a business plan showing how you intend to run it. Where the seller carries part of the price as a note, that seller financing often strengthens the file rather than weakening it.
If the business you are buying is small enough that this process is disproportionate, the other common path is funding the purchase from your existing entity's revenue rather than as an acquisition loan. That works when you already run a trading business with the deposits to support it, and it is worth pricing both ways before committing to either.
Which funders will consider a young online store with modest revenue?
A business under a year old with roughly $80,000 in annual sales sits below most bank thresholds but inside the range several revenue-based funders work in. The three things that decide it are time in business (many online-friendly funders start at 6 months), monthly deposit consistency, and what the money is for. A defined equipment purchase is one of the easier asks at that size, because the equipment itself can serve as collateral.
What tends to matter more than the raw revenue figure is how the money moves. Sales routed through a business checking account, with deposits arriving on a recognisable weekly or monthly rhythm and no run of negative-balance days, read very differently from the same revenue landing in a personal account in irregular lumps. Funders that work with e-commerce will often look at Stripe, Shopify or marketplace payout data alongside the statements, which usually helps a young store rather than hurting it.
The honest caveat at this stage is size: at $80,000 in annual sales, the offers that come back will be modest, and a shorter term on a smaller amount is generally the right first step rather than a disappointment. This is precisely where comparing funders matters, because guidelines at the young-and-small end differ more between funders than they do anywhere else in the market. The Broker Shop is a broker, not a funder — one application goes to the funders in our network of 50+ whose guidelines you actually meet. It is free to apply, and checking your options won't affect your credit score.
Frequently asked questions
See what you qualify for
One 2-minute application is matched to the funders whose guidelines you meet. It's free, and checking your options won't affect your credit score.
See What I Qualify For →The bottom line: Online-only businesses are funded on revenue, not real estate — keep clean business banking, show consistent deposits, and let funders who understand e-commerce compete for your file.