Stacking Detection

MCA Stacking Detection in Underwriting

Identify whether a business already has active advances by spotting competitors’ recurring ACH debits in its bank statements — so you know about existing positions before approving a new deal.

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Definition

What is MCA stacking?

Stacking is when a merchant takes a new cash advance while still repaying one or more existing advances. Each funder typically collects daily or weekly via ACH, so multiple advances mean multiple withdrawals draining the same account. Stacking raises default risk sharply: the combined holdback can exceed what the business’s cash flow can support, putting every position — including yours — at risk.

The Risk

Why stacking is a funding risk

A deal that looks affordable in isolation can be unfundable once existing advances are counted. If you fund without seeing the other positions, you may be lending into an account that’s already over-committed, where your repayments compete with several others for the same deposits. Detecting stacking before you fund is what keeps a clean-looking deal from becoming an immediate loss — and it works hand in hand with cash flow and affordability analysis.

How It Works

How stacking detection works

Existing advances leave a footprint in the bank statements: recurring debits, usually daily or weekly, with descriptors tied to the collecting funder. Stacking detection works by:

Extracting recurring debits from the merchant’s statements (the bank statement analysis step).
Matching those debits against a list of known competitor ACH descriptors.
Flagging likely positions — the recurring outflows that match a competitor pattern — for the underwriter to confirm.

The signal is the combination of regularity (same amount, steady cadence) and a descriptor that matches a known funder.

Automation

Automating it with a configurable descriptor list

The hard part of doing this manually is knowing every competitor’s ACH descriptor and scanning months of transactions for them. MCA Verify automates the scan and lets each funder maintain its own configurable list of competitor descriptors — so detection reflects who actually operates in your market and improves as you add to the list. Recurring debits are matched automatically and surfaced for review, rather than relying on an underwriter to catch them by eye. It’s one piece of automated MCA underwriting.

Meet MCA Verify

Catch stacking before you fund

MCA Verify scans extracted recurring debits against your configurable competitor list and flags likely existing advances automatically.

See MCA Verify

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What is MCA stacking?

MCA stacking is when a business takes on a new merchant cash advance while still repaying existing ones, resulting in multiple funders collecting from the same account and significantly higher default risk.

How do you detect stacking?

By extracting recurring ACH debits from the merchant’s bank statements and matching them against known competitor descriptors. Regular, repeating withdrawals tied to a funder’s descriptor indicate an existing advance.

Why does stacking matter to a funder?

Multiple advances drawing on the same deposits can exceed what the business’s cash flow can support, so a deal that looks affordable on its own may not be — making undetected stacking a major source of losses.

Can stacking detection be automated?

Yes. Tools like MCA Verify automatically scan extracted recurring debits against a funder-configurable list of competitor ACH descriptors and flag likely existing positions for the underwriter to confirm.

About MCA Stacking Detection

MCA Track (Unity FI Solutions LLC, Charlotte, NC) automates stacking detection in its MCA Verify underwriting product — matching recurring ACH debits in a merchant’s bank statements against each funder’s configurable list of competitor descriptors to flag existing advances before funding.