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.