Merchant Cash Advance Attorney for Florida Businesses

Two states, and only one of them is in the agreement

A Florida business that takes a merchant cash advance usually signs a document written for New York. The clause that matters is not the one about daily remittance; it is the one at the end, choosing New York law and a New York court. When the funder sues, that clause is why the papers arrive from a county most of its customers have never been to.

New York backs those clauses by statute, but only above figures most advances never reach. A choice of New York law under GOL § 5-1401 applies to transactions of at least $250,000. The matching forum provision in § 5-1402 needs at least $1,000,000 and an agreement to submit to New York jurisdiction; where it does apply, CPLR 327(b) stops the court dismissing the case as an inconvenient forum.

Below those numbers the clause is not backed by those sections. It is not thereby void either — it stands or falls on ordinary forum-selection principles, which is an argument about the document, not about geography.

What Florida law reaches

Florida declares a contract usurious where interest exceeds 18 percent a year, and above $500,000 the rate in s. 687.071 governs instead (§ 687.02). That limit speaks to interest on a loan — which is exactly what a merchant cash advance is written not to be. The purchase-of-receivables form is the funder's answer to usury, so the characterisation has to be argued before the rate is worth arguing about.

The 2024 disclosure law, and the sentence in it that cuts the other way

Florida's commercial financing part applies to transactions consummated on or after 1 January 2024, with carve-outs for depository institutions and for financing secured by real property, among others (§ 559.9612).

The definition section is the part worth reading closely. For purposes of that part, a provider's characterisation of an accounts receivable purchase as a purchase is conclusive that it is not a loan (§ 559.9611). That is a narrower sentence than it first looks — it is scoped to that part, not to Florida usury law generally — but it is the opposite instinct to the one New York courts bring to the same question.

And the remedy is not the merchant's. § 559.9615 gives the Attorney General exclusive authority to enforce the part, with fines set per incident and capped in aggregate. A disclosure failure is worth raising with counsel; it is not, on the face of the statute, a claim a business brings itself.

If something is already being collected in Florida

A judgment entered elsewhere can be enforced against assets held here, and the instrument is not the one New York uses. A New York creditor serves a restraining notice; in Florida the step is a writ of garnishment under chapter 77. The notices differ too: where the defendant is an individual, the clerk attaches a notice of exemption rights to the writ (§ 77.041).

What to do first, from Florida

The order is the same wherever you are, but two of the three steps change.

1. Find the court, not just the date. The caption tells you which state you are defending in, and that decides who can appear for you. A Florida lawyer cannot answer a New York complaint without New York admission.
2. Note how you were served. The response period runs from service, and it is set by the court hearing the case — not by the state the business sits in.
3. Check what is already moving. A frozen account, a garnishment, or a judgment docketed against you runs on its own track and does not wait for the lawsuit. A restrained account, a judgment entered without a lawsuit and a UCC filing are three different problems.

The firm defends these cases in New York, where most of them are brought, and is admitted in Florida as well. If the papers you were handed say New York, that is the question to start with — the rest follows from how an MCA lawsuit is defended.