IMF Loan

“	IMF Loan ability: Gives you $10,000 but you have to pay it back over time.	”
	~ In-game description

IMF Loan
General Information
Game	Bloons Tower Defense 6
Tower	Banana Farm
Unlocked at	20,000 XP
Cost	$6,375 (Easy) $7,500 (Medium) $8,100 (Hard) $9,000 (Impoppable)
Activated Ability	IMF Loan
Targeting Options	First, Last, Close, Strong
Camo Detection	No
Popology
Statistics
Damage	N/A
Pierce	N/A
Attack Speed	N/A
Range	40
Status Effects	N/A
Tower Boosts	N/A
Income/Life Boosts	While current bank's account capacity is not full ($10,000): +$40 per bank pay (0/3/x), 6 automatic bank pays (lifespan: N/A), generated within round ($240 per round) +$46.667 per bank pay (1/3/0), 6 automatic bank pays (lifespan: N/A), generated within round ($280 per round) +$40 per bank pay (1/3/0), 8 automatic bank pays (lifespan: N/A), generated within round ($320 per round) +$(n * 0.15), where n is current bank balance When withdrawn bank balance: +$(n), where n is current bank balance When selected IMF Loan is not in debt +$10,000 per ability use, straight to in-game cash balance rather than bank account Income penalty of -$10,000 value debt (income gain from all sources reduced to 50%)
Path Upgrades
Current	[[File:|48x48px|center|link=]] IMF Loan
Current	[[File:|48x48px|center|link=]] IMF Loan
Path Info
Path	Path 2
Path	Path 2
Upgrade Tier	4
Upgrade Tier	4
[Source]

IMF Loan is the Path 2, Tier 4 upgrade of the Banana Farm in BTD6. In addition to a bigger bank capacity of $10,000 ($12,500 with the Monkey Knowledge "Bigger Banks"), the IMF Loan has a special ability where, upon activation, the player is loaned $10,000, at the cost that half of the player's earnings to go into paying it off gradually (cost of 40% earnings with Backdoor Deals). IMF Loan abilities are still allowed to become activated while the player is in debt, but each subsequent IMF Loan ability usage comes at the cost of an extra $5000 debt ($4000 with Backroom Deals) and only an extra $5000 loan ($6000 with Backroom Deals) per ability usage.

The special ability has a cooldown time of 90 seconds, and additionally can't be used until the loan is entirely paid off.

IMF Loan Ability

Upon activation, the player will receive $10,000 but at the cost of $10,000 debt. The ability will recharge after 90 seconds, but can only be activated again if all of that IMF Loan Bank's debt is paid off. Both the loan and the debt will increase to $12,000 with the Monkey Knowledge "Backdoor Deals".

How the "debt" works is that 50% of all income gained (40% of all income gain with Backroom Deals) from all sources will be used to pay off the debt. The amount of income used to pay off the debt is paid off onto the first IMF Loan that owes money and then onto any other subsequent in-debt IMF Loans after paying off the first IMF Loan. The in-debt penalty will remain until all of the debt is paid off from all IMF Banks. The amount of debt is displayed to the right of the cash counter on the top of the screen. The amount of debt of a certain IMF Loan Bank is shown in the respective IMF Loan Bank. Note that you can still sell an IMF Loan Bank while any of the loans are in debt (including itself), but the loan debt will remain until fully paid off. Fortunately, it is impossible to lose as a result of not paying off IMF Loan debts because bankruptcy is non-existent in BTD6.

Unlike normal loans, the player cannot manually pay off the debt of a certain IMF Loan Bank.

The ability cannot be used if the player still has debt from the IMF Loan Bank.

Strategies

IMF Loan is a tricky ability to master, as though it is an ability explicitly about gaining money in a large burst, it effectively cancels out the profit with the penalty of a loan which halves the gains of all revenue sources (including other IMF Loan abilities) by paying itself off, leading to an ability that has a net total of zero change in the long-run.

However, the use of the ability can be one of the most powerful in some regards, as it provides the player with a powerful utility: sudden income for panic purchases or reinvestment into other Banana Farms. For the former, having an extra $10,000 to use in the now can be a major game changer, providing a large portion of cash for the cost of expensive, powerful towers, potentially allowing a defense to hold out where waiting for $10,000 to come naturally would be irrelevant since the player would have lost the game.

On the other hand, it provides a high risk in crippling economic gains in favor of long-term revenue but can help to pay off the debt the ability itself creates. This can also be seen with the use of the ability to upgrade the IMF Loan building itself into a Monkey-Nomics building, providing anywhere from an eighth to one-twelfth of the total cost depending on difficulty cost modifier, as well as opening the Tier 5 ability to help pay off the resulting debt quickly.

One important factor that can help increase the effectivity of the IMF Loan ability is a piece of Monkey Knowledge, being Backroom Deals. With Backroom Deals, $12,000 is loaned off at a time, effectively increasing the potency of the ability by 20%. This also is compounded with a 40% payoff rate and the resulting $12,000 debt, making payoff much longer but also far less taxing if more money is required during the payoff period. With this in play, it exacerbates both positives and negatives of the ability, though the benefit far outweighs the damage, as an extra $2,000 can allow for earlier high-cost purchases on revenue building towers and set up for a heavily prepared late game.

Income Earnings

The following are tables regarding the income production rate of the normal Monkey Bank function of the IMF Loan upgrade. In general, it has a higher bank capacity but a similar income production rate to Monkey Bank.

Income earning per round (12.0 and later)

As of Version 12.0, bank income bonus has decreased from +$160 to +$150 by default, including for IMF Loan. Therefore, instead of at least $240 per round, this income gain is decreased to at least $230 per round.

Note: The table assumes that the IMF Loan has been initially upgraded before the round starts and that the income is given as when after the round.

Round while full cash stored	0/4/x	1/4/0	2/4/0	0/4/x + Benjamin Lvl 5	1/4/0 + Benjamin Lvl 5	2/4/0 + Benjamin Lvl 5	0/4/x + Benjamin Lvl 9	1/4/0 + Benjamin Lvl 9	2/4/0 + Benjamin Lvl 9
1	265	311	357	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA
2	569	668	766	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA
3	918	1078	1238	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA
4	1321	1550	1780	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA
5	1783	2094	2404	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA
6	2315	2718	3121	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA
7	2927	3436	3945	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA
8	3631	4262	4894	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA
9	4440	5212	5984	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA
10	5370	6304	7238	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA
11	6440	7560	8681	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA
12	7671	9005	10339	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA
13	9086	10666	12246	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA
14	10714	12500	12500	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA
15	12500

Income earning per round (11.0-11.2)

TBA

Income earning per round (pre-11.0)

The following is information regarding income earning per round for the IMF Loan before it received a buff when combined with Benjamin. On Version 7.0 and later, there was a Monkey Bank nerf that did not affect IMF Loans or Monkey-Nomics.

Note: The table assumes that the IMF Loan has been initially upgraded before the round starts and that the income is given as when after the round.

Note 2: In BTD6 v3.x, the Monkey Bank (implied for the IMF Loan; originally tested by Monkey Bank) does not appear to consistently calculate interest correctly for the 0/3/x and 1/3/0 banks. The following results are the maximum of three tests

Round while full cash stored	0/3/x	1/3/0	2/3/0	0/3/x + Benjamin Lvl 5	1/3/0 + Benjamin Lvl 5	2/3/0 + Benjamin Lvl 5	0/3/x + Benjamin Lvl 8	1/3/0 + Benjamin Lvl 8	2/3/0 + Benjamin Lvl 8
1	276	322	368	290	338	386	298	348	397
2	593	692	791	623	671	831	641	748	854
3	958	1118	1278	1006	1109	1342	1035	1150	1380
4	1309	1608	1838	1447	1614	1929	1488	1670	1985
5	1782	2171	2481	1954	2198	2605	2010	2268	2680
6	2325	2819	3221	2537	2861	3382	2609	2956	3429
7	2953	3564	4027	3207	3628	4276	3224	3747	4341
8	3589	4420	4999	3978	4511	5256	4006	4657	5390
9	4403	5405	6116	4865	5525	6382	4830	5703	6569
10	5339	6538	7402	5884	6692	7726	5853	6907	7983
11	6347	7840	8834	7058	8034	9271	7029	8290	9577
12	7506	9339	10481	8391	9561	11000	8382	9882	11412
13	8908	11008	12421	9867	11354	12500	9937	11654	12500
14	10520	12500	12500	11564	12500		11651	12500
15	12374			12500			12500
16	12500

Update History

4.0

Cost of IMF Loan is cheaper ($12000 --> $7500)

8.0

IMF Loan ability (along with other income-based abilities) now undergo the full initial cooldown before initial ability usage

12.0

IMF Loan bonus cash produced per round reduced from $160 to $150.

14.0

(Undocumented) If the IMF Loan's debt has been paid off, the Banana Farm that triggered it cannot use its ability until the next round starts.

Gallery

BTD6 upgrade artwork as shown in the tower display menu

Tower

Debt in the cash menu

Debt that needs repaying in this Banana Farm

Using two IMF Loan Abilities at once (when Backroom Deals active). Note second IMF Loan's debt

After about $500 income earn, $300 goes into cash and $200 goes into paying off. $250 debt paid off from Backroom Deals.

Selling off an IMF Loan with bank interest (note the centered income gain)

IMF Loan Crosspaths (Top: Path 1, Bottom: Path 3)

Trivia

• IMF stands for International Monetary Fund, and it loans money to countries with troubled economies.
• The IMF Loan's loan does not work like a real-life loan for the following reasons:
  • Real-life loans require all of the loan plus interest to be paid off until the loan debt reaches the maximum loan debt allowance, which otherwise would lead to financial consequences such as bankruptcy.
  • Interest as increased debt for real-world loan debts increase over time; IMF Loan debt remains constant between the end of a round and the beginning of a round.
  • Paying off the IMF Loan debt decreases with the increase of income gain (from any source or income gain), rather than not gaining income as debt is being paid off.
  • Such automatic paying off the loan is always 50% of the income earned, but automatic paying off loans does not exist or is not commonplace.
  • One can basically not pay back an IMF Loan for however amount of rounds as the player wishes without losing from forced bankruptcy.
• In Version 7.0, the Monkey Bank received a nerf to the amount of bank capacity, leading to the Monkey Bank to have an overall lower bank capacity. This was not the case for IMF Loan, causing an indirect buff to the IMF Loan.
  • The normal Monkey Bank now has $7,000 in capacity while the IMF Loan still has $10,000.
• Using multiple loans at once will grant the full $10,000 from the first ability, but each subsequent loans will be affected by the other loans, granting $5,000 ($6,000 with Backroom Deals) and will only increase the total loan by $5,000 ($4,000 with Backroom Deals) rather than $10,000.
  • This is because 50% (40%) of the loan is being used to pay off the existing debts.
• There was a known bug related to IMF Loan in Co-Op where towers can disappear when the server refreshes the map to sync the game if there is an IMF Loan present on the map. This seems to be patched around version 12.0.