How to vet an MCA lead provider in 2026:12 questions to ask before the first order

How do you tell a real MCA lead provider from a data reseller?

Vetting an MCA lead provider takes 12 questions, asked before the first order and answered in writing: 3 on where the leads come from, 3 on exclusivity, 3 on consent and compliance, and 3 on delivery, disputes and credits. A data reseller cannot answer the first 3.

A real provider paid for the click. A reseller paid for a file somebody else's click created. The 12 questions below are 12 ways of asking which one is on the call.

The price ladder explains why the second kind exists. Public aged-application prices read on 28 August 2026 put a full MCA submission at $17 to $25 at 24 to 48 hours old, and at $0.30 once it is 60 days and older. A file bought at $0.30 carries no advertising cost.

Ask all 12 before the first order, and ask in writing. An answer given on a call is not a term.

What should you ask about where the leads come from?

Questions 1 to 3. Source is the group most sellers answer with an adjective. Real time, high intent and premium are adjectives. Who paid, what the merchant cleared and how old the record is are facts.

Question 1. Who paid for the click that created this lead?

A straight answer names the platform and the account: Meta, Google, a page the seller owns, an outbound desk. A seller running its own traffic knows what it spends, because it wrote the cheque before an application existed. A reseller answers with network, partners or publishers and cannot say which.

Question 2. What must a merchant clear before release?

A straight answer is a list of numbers with minimums on them. The standard published on this site is 9 gates, 6 of them numeric: $20,000 requested, 12 months in business, $200,000 annual revenue, $15,000 monthly deposits, 580 FICO, and 2 or fewer open positions. A seller who says qualified merchants and stops has said nothing.

Question 3. How old is the record on arrival?

Ask for the age in units. Seconds, minutes, hours, days. That one number separates a $17 to $25 file at 24 to 48 hours from a $0.30 file at 60 days, and inside a CRM the two look identical. The word fresh has no unit.

What should you ask about exclusivity?

Questions 4 to 6. Exclusive is a contract term sold as a property of the file. A record is not exclusive. An order is. These 3 questions ask one thing from 3 angles: how many times does this merchant get sold, counting the sales after yours.

Question 4. How many buyers receive the same merchant?

A straight answer is a count. 1 is a count and 4 is a count, and a seller who sells to 4 should say 4. Shared has its own price. Shared sold as exclusive shows up on the phone rather than in the file. What should worry you is exclusive to you with no number behind it.

Question 5. Can this record be resold at 60 days as aged data?

Ask it in those words. Most exclusivity clauses cover the moment of sale and say nothing about the months after it, and that second sale is where $0.30 aged files come from. A straight answer is never, written into the order. What should worry you is we do not currently, which binds nobody tomorrow.

Question 6. Is exclusivity in the order or on the call?

Every answer to questions 4 and 5 is worth what the paper says. Ask for the clause before the first order, one paragraph naming the buyer count and the resale term. What should worry you is an agreement with the word exclusive nowhere in it.

What should you ask about consent and compliance?

Questions 7 to 9, and this is where a wrong answer costs money rather than a dial. 47 U.S.C. 227(b)(3)(B) sets $500 per violation or actual loss, whichever is greater, and 227(b)(3) lets a court treble it, to not more than 3 times, for a willful or knowing violation. You make the calls.

Question 7. Does your consent language match the rule in force?

Part of this category answers that with law that no longer exists. The FCC one-to-one consent requirement was adopted in FCC 23-107, published at 89 FR 5098 on 26 January 2024, to take effect 27 January 2025. The Eleventh Circuit vacated it in Insurance Marketing Coalition Ltd. v. FCC, No. 24-10277, decided 24 January 2025, 3 days before it took effect. The mandate issued 30 April 2025, and the FCC removed the language by Order DA 25-621, effective 29 August 2025. The rule in force today, 47 CFR 64.1200(f)(9), carries no one-to-one language at all. Vendor pages still publish that it took effect and binds every seller.

Question 8. Do you treat a merchant's cell phone as a business line?

Most operators have this backwards, because 2 rules are read as 1. The Telemarketing Sales Rule does exempt business-to-business calls from the Do Not Call Registry: 16 CFR 310.6(b)(7) covers calls between a telemarketer and any business, and the Federal Trade Commission states the Registry covers personal numbers, not business lines. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act exempts nothing. 47 CFR 64.1200(a)(2) requires prior express written consent for autodialed or prerecorded telemarketing to the lines at (a)(1)(i) to (iii), and (a)(1)(iii) is any number assigned to a paging service or cellular telephone service. Every merchant an MCA shop dials is reached on a cell.

Question 9. What happens when a merchant revokes consent?

47 CFR 64.1200(a)(10) requires a revocation honored within 10 business days of receipt, makes a key-press opt-out and the words stop, quit, end, revoke, opt out, cancel and unsubscribe per se reasonable, and bars a caller from designating an exclusive means of revoking. A straight answer names the 10 business days and how a revocation reaches you from the seller. The unrelated-matters part runs to 31 January 2027 under FCC Order DA 26-12.

NOTETwo states break the business-to-business exemption on the age of the seller, not the call. Oklahoma, at 15 O.S. 775C.5(10), requires 3 years operating under the same name and 50 percent of dollar volume in repeat sales. Maryland, at 14-4502(A)(1)(III), requires the same 3 years. PayPerMerchant was formed in 2026 and fails both, as any seller under 3 years old does.

What should you ask about delivery, disputes and credits?

Questions 10 to 12 decide what happens after the money moves, and they are the 3 buyers skip. A bad answer here does not cost you a deal. It costs you any way of getting something back.

Question 10. How does a record reach my CRM?

A straight answer names the mechanism: pushed straight into your CRM, sent by webhook, or emailed. Ask whether the consent record travels with the lead, because a record arriving without its timestamp, its page and the language the merchant saw is a name and a number. No delivery time in minutes is published here, because this company has delivered no volume yet.

Question 11. What happens to a lead I mark bad?

Pin down 3 things: what counts, how long you have, and what comes back. A disconnected number, a junk name and a merchant who never filled in a form should all count. A window measured in hours expires before a slow week ends. The policy published here returns the credit with no time limit and no form.

Question 12. What is the minimum order and the term?

A straight answer is 2 numbers and a term: the smallest order the seller will take, what a lead costs at that size, and what happens at the end of the month. What should worry you is a setup fee or a monthly platform fee. The terms published here are $60 a lead, no minimum order and no minimum term. There is a contract, and what is not in it is a lock-in.

Which answers should end the call?

Six of them, and each is a sentence rather than a feeling. None of the 6 is about tone, price or how new the company is.

1. One-to-one consent is required and we handle it. It was vacated on 24 January 2025 and removed from the CFR on 29 August 2025.
2. These are business calls, so the TCPA does not apply. 47 CFR 64.1200(a)(2) reaches any number assigned to a cellular telephone service.
3. Exclusive, with no count and no clause. Ask how many buyers, or price it as shared.
4. We cannot say where the traffic comes from. An owner names the platform and the account.
5. Real time, with no age in units. Seconds and hours are facts. Fresh is not.
6. Price on a call only. An unpublished price moves with the buyer.

What is not a reason to end the call?

Being new. A seller formed this year has no delivery history and no first-party close rate, and neither is the same as a bad answer to any of the 12. PayPerMerchant was formed in 2026.

How do you test a provider without committing a budget?

Make the 12 answers a document before you make anything a purchase. That costs nothing, and a seller who will not put questions 4, 5 and 11 in writing has answered question 6 for you. Then take the smallest batch on offer, into the CRM and the phone room you would use at full volume.

Count 3 things: how many numbers reach the person named on the file, how many merchants agree they filled in a form, and how many clear your own underwriting standard. Contact rate and close rate are defined differently by everybody who quotes them.

Which of the 12 can PayPerMerchant answer today?

All 12, in the same 4 groups. 1 of the answers is that the figure does not exist yet, written that way rather than dressed up.

More on this site: pricing and terms, the 9 gates, how the ads are run, how figures are sourced.

How does PayPerMerchant answer these twelve questions?

One buyer per merchant, never resold, 9 gates with 6 numbers in them, a credit back on a bad lead with no time limit, and the price on the page rather than on a call: $60 a lead, no minimum order, no minimum term. The first 10 free, so a first batch is a test.

Pricing and terms in full. Get Leads.

What do funders ask when switching lead providers?

What is the single most important question to ask a lead provider?

Who paid for the click that created this lead. A provider running its own traffic names the platform and the account. A reseller answers with network, partners or publishers. That one answer predicts the other 11, because exclusivity, consent and resale all depend on owning the source.

How do I verify a provider is not reselling my leads?

You cannot verify it afterwards, so put it in the order. Ask 2 things in writing: how many buyers receive this merchant, and whether the record can be resold at 60 days as aged data. Aged submissions read on 28 August 2026 sell at $0.30 at 60 days and older.

What does a consent certificate actually prove?

It proves what one person saw and typed at one moment: the timestamp, the page, the language shown and the number entered. It does not make the call lawful on its own. 47 CFR 64.1200(a)(2) still requires prior express written consent for autodialed telemarketing to a cell phone.

Should a provider let me test before committing to volume?

Yes, and the test should run through the CRM and the phone room you would use at full volume, or you are testing the desk. PayPerMerchant publishes $60 a lead with no minimum order and no minimum term, and the first 10 leads are free, so a first batch costs nothing.

What is a reasonable replacement or credit policy?

One that names what counts, states what comes back, and does not expire before you can use it. A disconnected number, a junk name and a merchant who never filled in a form should all count. The policy published here returns the credit with no time limit.

How do I check whether a provider owns its own traffic?

Ask 3 things: the platform and the account, who the form belongs to, and whose name is on the privacy policy the merchant agreed to. An owner answers all 3 in one sentence. No published advertising cost exists for small-business finance, so a quoted cost per application proves nothing.

What contract terms should an MCA funder refuse to sign?

Five. A term that does not state how many buyers receive the same merchant. A term silent on resale after the first sale, which is where $0.30 aged files come from. A credit policy that expires in hours. A minimum spend that renews itself. A price that exists only after a call.

How long should it take to receive the first lead after signing up?

Ask for the answer in units and take it in writing. No figure in minutes is published here, because this company has delivered no volume yet. What is publishable is the shape: real time means the record leaves the form and reaches your CRM in the same session.