It’s hard to believe, for us at least, but Wonga.com is a year-old this month. We’ve actually been providing the UK’s most flexible loan service for over a year, but the Wonga website received its full launch just 12 months ago.

In that time we’ve achieved some genuine firsts in the credit world, helped lots of people with our online cash advances and recently provided our 100,000th short term loan. If you’ll permit us to do some brief birthday bragging, we’ve also won some top awards and received loads of great feedback from our customers.

So we’re celebrating our ‘coming of age’ throughout July, by offering customers the chance to win some big cash prizes. Simply by helping us spread the word about our award-winning service, your name will be entered into our birthday draw. You can find out more and get involved at our birthday prize draw page.

Thanks for using Wonga during our first year and we hope to be of service for many more to come…

Wonga has been short listed in several categories of the Europa Awards being run by TechCrunch Europe, the leading startup and tech blog. The awards will honour the best tech companies and startups across the web and mobile scene from across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Wonga is up for Best Web Application or Service, Best Design, Best Startup Founder and Best New Startup. The awards are now open for public voting, so if you’re a fan of our cash advance service, feel free to make your voice heard!

The team has been all smiles this week, after Wonga provided its 100,000th short term loan. Not bad considering we launched the site less than a year ago!

Our congratulations go to KT, of Chester le Street, who received our 100,000th cash advance and wins a year’s interest-free use of Wonga’s award-winning service. Lucky lady. 

So why have we helped so many happy customers in such a relatively short space of time? Well we set out with a simple yet challenging idea - to offer UK consumers a short term and transparent alternative to traditional lenders.

We all have Wonga moments, when an unexpected or urgent expense springs up from nowhere - and it always seems to happen at a bad time. We help people solve short term cash flow problems without requiring a long term commitment, and we do it in the most flexible and responsible way possible.

People love the convenience, control and complete transparency we offer. It’s perhaps best summed up by a few of our customers themselves…

 Hi, I must take time to thank you for accepting my recent application and for the amazing speed of the transfer (30 minutes - has to be a record!). I hope very much to be able to use the service again, especially when a direct debit is due a couple of days before pay day and the banks are their usually helpful self (not!). Love your website too - refreshing and well laid out. Best wishes to all your staff.  

AF, Liverpool

 

 Hello guys/girls. I’ve actually already repaid my loan early, but I just wanted to say a huge ‘thank you’ for making this service available. I used it to cover an unexpected cost and, to be honest, I could’ve asked my bank, but your service was just SO much easier AND quicker. And because I repaid it quickly, it cost me next to nothing! You guys are DIAMONDS! And I always think it’s nice to say ‘thanks’ when someone does me a good turn.  

Martin T, Barnsley

 

 Please accept my thanks to yourself and your company. I was at first dubious about using an online service in this way and did not expect the level of service I received. You did exactly what you said you would and in a very efficient manner.  The cost of using your service compared to other providers is night and day. I did not have to worry about cheques clearing, high costs, uncertainty and of course wasted time.  A first class service, more service sector companies should take a leaf out of your book

James K, Shrophsire

We’ve become the country’s only 24/7 lender, guaranteeing cash deposits within an hour around the clock. So when you’re caught short and need some fast cash for a few days or weeks, give Wonga’s online application a go. You can decide exactly how much money you need and then determine the cost by selecting when to repay us.

We can’t guarantee approval, because we’re only interested in helping people who can afford the service, but you’ll get an instant answer either way.

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Wonga has today made an announcement about a huge second round of funding, which means we have new backing from some of the world’s top VC companies. The cash will allow us to continue growing and keep improving the service even further for our customers. Check out our press release…   

Wonga.com, the leading online provider of short term cash advances, today announced the completion of a major new round of funding led by Accel Partners and Greylock Partners.

The $22.25m round was also supported by existing investor Balderton Capital and will allow the company to continue the strong growth demonstrated since the site’s full market launch just eleven months ago.

Wonga.com was founded by Errol Damelin and Jonty Hurwitz and helps UK consumers solve occasional cash flow problems in a quick yet responsible manner. The company has already provided nearly 100,000 flexible cash advances of up to 30 days. Applicants select exactly how much cash they need, up to £750. They can then determine their own price by then selecting how many days they want the money for.

Errol Damelin, chief executive officer of Wonga, said: “Our ground-breaking technical innovation and focus on amazing our customers with high levels of service has enabled us to become profitable in a very short a space of time. Yet we are also building a sustainable business based on making highly selective and responsible lending decisions.

“We’ve built to scale and there is now huge scope for expansion and delivering even more value for our customers. Balderton Capital has backed us from concept and our two new investors show how game-changing the Wonga proposition is.

“Accel Partners is a global investor that has backed some of the fastest growth companies of the last two decades, such as Facebook. Greylock Partners is a thought leader and a long-term investor and they’ve made a significant statement by making a commitment to Wonga. Backing from three such prominent firms underscores our ability to challenge a major market in a very meaningful way.” 

Laurel Bowden, partner at Greylock, commented: “In this market, there are some excellent opportunities to build innovative financial services businesses. Wonga’s management team has developed a very innovative and real-time credit offering, solving relatively small immediate cash needs, and the business has shown impressive traction in the market. This is a key deal for Greylock in Europe and we are pleased to have an opportunity to help Wonga expand both locally and globally.”

Wonga.com is the first and only company to fully automate the lending process and provide a truly online credit solution around the clock. Applicants receive an instant answer thanks to sophisticated risk and decision technology that crunches hundreds of pieces of data in milliseconds. Cash is then deposited into the customer’s bank account within an hour, at any time of day or night.

Sonali De Rycker, partner at Accel, said: “Wonga’s ability to offer credit in real-time while keeping a tight control on customer experience and defaults is truly disruptive. The team has done a phenomenal job growing the company rapidly over a short period of time.  We believe the company has the potential to become a category leader in the consumer finance marketplace.”

Wonga has received glowing feedback from customers and industry insiders alike, recently achieving a world-class Net Promoter Score of 79% and scooping numerous awards including the Red Herring 100 EMEA, Credit Risk Team of the Year from Credit Today and One to Watch in the annual Media Momentum listings.

Bernard Liautaud, partner at Balderton, added: “It is a great achievement to have raised such a significant second-round funding in this environment and proves the success of the Wonga business model. We backed the company three years ago and in that short space of time Errol and his team have created breakthrough innovation in consumer finance.”

Apply for a Wonga loan before the end of June and you may get more than you bargained for. If you’re accepted, not only will the cash hit your account within an hour as normal, but you might just be named one of our lucky ‘100k’ winners too.

As the Financial Times recently reported, we are due to provide our 100,000th Wonga loan before the end of this month. And that’s despite the fact we launched the Wonga site less than a year ago! Our service has proved even more popular than we imagined and it’s partly thanks to our happy customers spreading the word.

To celebrate this milestone, we’ve decided to create some exciting prizes. The person who is accepted for our 100,000th cash advance will receive interest-free Wonga loans for an entire year! Subject to our usual approval process, they will have instant cash advances at their disposal for 12 whole months and won’t pay a penny in interest or fees.

Not only that, but we’ll also wipe our charges for the next 50 successful applicants as a one-off celebration. You can find out more and check out the T&Cs at our 100,000 loans page. So good luck if you are using Wonga this month, but please remember that a chance-based celebration like this isn’t a reason to apply for credit you don’t need in the first place.  

Thanks again to all our customer for helping us hit this impressive mark sometime soon…

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Wonga was featured in the Financial Times this week. The article talked about our technical innovation and why customers like our online cash advance service. There’s a brief extract below, but you can read the whole thing here.

Wonga is pushing innovation in this market, harnessing technology to create a faster, slicker, more foolproof service. The online service is entirely automated and available 24 hours a day. Once a user has entered their details, the system pulls in about 1,500 data points to build a picture of their credit history. If accepted, the money can be in a borrower’s bank account within the hour, even at 2am.

An investigation by Which? this week has exposed how much of your hard-earned cash you could be throwing away, depending on where you get your holiday wonga. Airports offer some of the worst exchange rates, having last minute or unprepared travelers at their mercy!

Holiday makers seeking to get the biggest bang for their buck (sorry, sterling) should always spend a little time shopping around. Here’s the low-down from Which?

… the best deals for $500 were obtained from city centre bureaux de change and online currency providers. The most expensive providers were, unsurprisingly, the airport bureaux de change - if you don’t think about currency til you’re about to fly off into the sun, you are a captive market.

We also found that, while the Post Office online offers a good exchange rate for US dollars (it gave us the sixth-cheapest rates on average over six dates), the rate you’d get if you just strolled into a branch would be far less attractive. If using the Post Office is convenient, it is best to buy online, if possible, and opt for branch pick-up as there is no delivery fee (unlike home delivery).

The difference between the best and worse providers for $500 was more than £40.

When you’re buying currency, the best option is to pay with cash, although this is obviously not possible if you’re buying it online and have to pay upfront.

If you can, pay with a Maestro card, rather than by Visa, Amex or MasterCard, to avoid paying a cash transaction charge that will blow away any favourable exchange rate.

Wonga has been enjoying a particularly rich run of awards over the past couple of weeks! At the top of the list has to be last night’s Credit Today Awards, where we picked up the gong for Credit Risk Team of the Year from Irish funnyman Dara O’Brien.

We were also very proud to be a finalist for Responsible Lender of the Year at the same event.

Prior to our glittering date at the Grosvernor, we attended two other prestigious events in the last fortnight. We spoke at a First Tuesday event, after Wonga was named as one of the three Most Promising Internet Companies in the UK. And we joined other business boomers at the Media Momentum Awards, where Wonga was hailed as ‘One to Watch’ in the annual celebration of fast growth businesses.

Still not impressed? We can see you’re a hard act to please. OK, let’s not forget the judges of the National Business Awards, who highly commended us in the Orange Best Use of Technology category last week. Thanks guys.

We’re not ones for lengthy award speeches, but the entire Wonga team would like to say a big thank you to all our customers for your loyal support!

In the world of business you can sometimes get bogged down in the detail and day-to-day tasks. Suited corporate types might say it’s a case of ‘missing the big picture.’ But at Wonga we continually try to remember the reason for our existence, which is to make our customers happy. Most companies these days make claims along these lines, but not many walk the walk.  

Happy Wonga customers = happy Wonga staff, so we love hearing from people who have benefitted from one of our flexible loans. We get so many nice comments we can’t possibly share them all on our customer testimonials page, but we’d like to post another small selection of recent feedback from customers here. 

The following extracts were given anonymously, so we’re not going to attribute them to names, but each one is a genuine comment that gave us a big grin!

Keep up the good work, very very happy with service.

You are simple, friendly and easy to contact.

A very satisfied Wonga customer and I would happily recommend this service to friends and family.

It’s perfect x

Your website is easy to use, friendly staff and no messing around which I love.

Happy with your service in all aspects!

Excellent service. cannot praise it high enough.

I am perfectly happy with Wonga and I’m grateful for helping me out.

Fantastic Service. I am a returning loyal customer.

I think your service is excellent and so quick. I think the interest rate is good that’s why I use it.

Avoiding bank jargon can naturally be tricky if you’re trying to get a loan from a bank, but there is a straight-talking alternative in the shape of an online cash advance from Wonga. In fact our website recently won an Interactive Media Award for its simple and customer-friendly design.

The entire Wonga service is jargon-free and we even provide a jargon buster for any bank type jargon you might encounter elsewhere. If you don’t rate industry awards, just take a look around Wonga.com for yourself or check out what existing Wonga customers have to say about the service.

Most of our customers say they love the simplicity of the service (amongst other things!), so if you want to avoid bank jargon you know where to look for a totally transparent solution to any short term cash flow problems in the future.