Over the past year market awareness around UA financing has increased dramatically. When I first joined PvX, UA financing was often mistaken for accounts receivable factoring (a financial product that has its use cases but is fundamentally more of a short-term cash flow solution vs a growth capital offering). Because UA financing was novel in the market and fit so well the market’s need, the first response we honestly got from many companies was, “this sounds too good to be true, there must be a catch somewhere.”

Thankfully, due to the evangelizing efforts of PvX and others, UA financing is now fully mainstream and has become the first choice option for most companies that are looking to scale user acquisition. According to Aream / Invest Game’s 3Q25 Report, there were 22 Series A’s in mobile gaming in the first three quarters of 2025. For context, PvX alone completed nearly a similar amount of deals during the same timeframe.

However, despite the mainstream acceptance, I still see four common misconceptions in the zeitgeist around UA financing that I’d like to call out and correct.

1. UA financing is only for weak companies that can’t raise big equity rounds at a high valuation

This could not be further from the truth. In fact, at PvX, we only fund companies with the very strongest cohorts that we feel have the ability to scale rapidly. A term sheet from PvX should be viewed as one of the strongest forms of validation your studio can get. Over the past year we’ve reviewed over 500 games and apps and issued term sheets to less than 20% of them. Given this quantum of data processed, our models are a very statistically accurate predictor of which games can scale and which cannot. In a market full of noise, where VCs are often doing deals based on very light traction and early KPIs, a term sheet from PvX is a very strong signal.

2. Taking UA financing is very risky because it is debt

This is also simply untrue. The key thing to understand is that, if you have poor marketing performance while taking money from PvX, you will never be in a worse position financially then you would be if you made the same non-performing spend without financing through PvX. I think this fact remains misunderstood by the market.

PvX only gets paid when you are paid by your customers. There is never a mismatch of timing of cash flows and collections are always in lock-step with new revenues generated.

Put simply, UA financing is the lowest risk capital you can utilize to scale user acquisition spend.

3. Putting UA financing in place is an operational burden

UA financing should not add incremental burden to your operations. Both the product and borrower experience should be seamless in aiding you to scale your business. This should not require weekly/monthly meetings or manual cohort reporting to maintain the facility.

With PvX you always maintain full control of your own budget and operations. We strive to be the most helpful financing firm in the market but we don't insert ourselves into your operations and will never tell you how much you can spend.

At PvX we’ve invested heavily in building a best-in-class platform that makes all aspects of getting funding from PvX (from investment requests to monthly performance monitoring) entirely seamless.

4. All money is created equal and all UA financing funds are the same

I wrote a whole blog and recorded a podcast episode linked below with Two and a Half Gamers on this subject because I think it’s so important and yet so misunderstood.

For example, I highlight that two important considerations to make before signing up with a UA funder is understanding how scalable and flexible the provider is. The bottom line is that you need to work with partners you can trust and feel confident about their execution. You should take the process of picking a UA financing partner to work with just as thoughtfully as you would choose a VC investor.

Take the time to do reference checks, speak to companies that have worked with them and get a feel for how they operate and most importantly, how they will treat you if things go poorly.