I have written before in this space about merchant cash advances for airlines. The idea being that an airline receives almost all its revenue from passengers via credit cards if there was a funding agent large enough and able to take on the risk, one could fund the airline and be paid back by taking a percentage of future debit and credit card sales. I was thinking of this when reading an article on troubling times in the tourism and airline industries in Sunday’s New York Times. The tourism and hospitality industries rely on merchant cash advances as sources of funding and as an alternative to loans in order to help them market and grow. This article discusses a creative way to deal with decreases in airline seat capacity by having partnerships among different sectors within the hospitality industry. From a merchant cash advance standpoint, here is another way to make use of funds, through creative marketing partnerships and programs. We have seen merchants in the same mall, block or town partner together to use merchant funding to create co-branded direct mailers, advertising and marketing programs.

Canafunding, a lock box solution for merchant cash advances, and Amerimerchant’s CEO recently did an update to his 2008 Predictions for the Merchant Cash Advance industry in 2008 and they are looking pretty prescient, nice work!