The Wonga forum has kicked off to a great start with lots of user activity in the one month since going live. Having recently surpassed 500 registered users, we are very pleased with its steady growth and usage.

Already accruing a stockpile of solutions to frequently asked questions, we can see this is going to be a valuable resource going forward. Plus we’re beginning to see organic conversations developing amongst customers, which is really exciting for us!

One user recently took the opportunity to submit a question to Errol, our CEO. They wanted to know how Wonga works, to which Errol gave a prompt response! If you’ve got something on your mind, whether it’s a question for Errol or simply something you’d like to share with other users, we’d love to hear from you.

Visit the Wonga forum today and join the discussion!

When blogs or newspapers cover Wonga, or someone spots our TV ad for the first time and tweets about it, it’s rare that our typical APR doesn’t get mentioned. Indeed, it’s often the main talking point and people who don’t understand how the equation works (which is most of us), can leap to some scary conclusions. After all, we’re trained to compare APR when assessing the value of credit, yet there are two major problems with using APR to gauge the cost of ultra short term loans. 

For starters it was a measure designed to compare rates of charge on an annual basis, for traditional loans of a year or more. Yet the credit market has changed and when it’s applied to very short term loans such as a Wonga cash advance, it grossly distorts the actual interest charged - by not only multiplying, but also compounding it many times over. Take a Wonga loan of a week - actual interest charged is around the 7% mark, yet the official APR is over 2,000%. It’s so distorting that the APR number keeps going up as our loans becomes shorter and therefore cheaper - doing the exact opposite of what you’d expect a value comparison tool to do. 

It’s a view that was supported by the OFT when they published an interim report on short term credit, saying: “Consumers appear to find the inclusion of the total repayment amount more helpful than an APR in understanding the cost of short-term credit. This may be due to the information distortion which results when an APR is applied to low sums over short periods.” 

Secondly, APR applies to some credit products, such as short term personal loans and credit cards, yet other ways of charging for emergency cash are exempt, namely extortionate overdraft fees being used by UK banks. Which is where the headline for this post comes in… Yep, it does say two million percent.

An amazing story from the Observer tells of an Alliance & Leicester customer being charged £80 for going 15p overdrawn for eleven days, which equates to actual interest of more than 50,000% and a theoretical APR in the millions. So while we don’t believe APR is a helpful measure for consumers - certainly not based on our own customers’ feedback - the actual charges being made by High Street banks are the truly eye-watering numbers of the financial world. Yet they don’t affect everyone and can usually only be found in the small print, so they frequently go unnoticed.

Whatever you think of Wonga’s typical APR, we clearly and transparently calculate the cost of our tailored loans up-front and, to give you a quick example, the unfortunate bank customer in the story could have borrowed £150 from us over the same 11-day period and paid £22.37 in interest & fees. That’s roughly three-and-a-half times less the cost of bank’s charges, to borrow 1,000 times the amount of money!

Sure it’s an extreme example, but British banks are charging up to £20 per day on unauthorised overdrafts and only the fact they won a recent court battle, plus there is no headline-grabbing APR to calculate, means they keep getting away with it. It’s estimated UK banks made more than £2 billion from these charges last year alone, meaning it’s a huge source of revenue they will keep fighting to protect.

Wonga.com is very excited to announce our new Wonga Forum.

The Wonga Forum is a place where our customers can talk anonymously with each other about financial topics such as budgeting and saving or just join in on the chit chat. You can post questions or contribute to active conversations, or you might find some helpful hints that other users have posted. You can even give us your feedback about the site or our service or ask our CEO a question!

Visit the Wonga Forum today and join the discussion!

Image via CrunchBase

Wonga is one of the largest contributors to Kiva’s interest-free micro loans that help low income entrepreneurs in developing nations. For every new loan we process, we commit to lending £1 interest-free to Kiva’s cause of promoting entrepreneurship in the developing world. So rest assured that by taking a Wonga loan, you are not only helping yourself, but you are also aiding entrepreneurs in the developing world. We even let you voice your preferences on which countries and to whom the Wonga Kiva partnership should lend to.

We pride ourselves in the flexibility and transparency we offer our customers and by teaming up with Kiva, we can apply these principles to those that need it the most in developing nations. With the support of our customers we’ve already been able to help over two thousand individuals with interest-free loans through Kiva.  You can learn and keep up to date on Wonga’s lending activity through Kiva by joining the Wonga Lending Team.

World’s first iPhone loan application provides instant ‘street credit’

Wonga.com, an online provider of short-term cash advances, has launched the first ever credit app for the iPhone, allowing both existing customers and first-time applicants to access small, short-term loans from anywhere.

The London-based company, which provides ultra-flexible loans of between one and 31 days, says it will turn the touch-screen device into a virtual cash machine for urgent or unexpected expenses.

Errol Damelin, founder and CEO, said: “Our vision has always been to provide UK consumers with a fast, convenient and short-term way to solve immediate cash flow problems. While automating the lending process in a responsible way was a big challenge, our technology now enables us to develop a range of products which do just that.”

iPhone applicants can use their fingertip to move Wonga’s unique sliders, first choosing exactly how much cash they need (between £1 and £1,000), before determining the cost by deciding when to repay. The cost is always calculated up-front and they can then make a full application on the phone’s screen. Applicants receive an instant decision around the clock, with those who are approved guaranteed cash to their bank account within 15 minutes.

Wonga is the UK’s only lender to give applicant’s complete flexibility over the size and length of the loan required, with the cost determined by the number of days the money is taken for. Even early repayment is fee-free. The company’s web service was given its full market launch in July 2008 and has already processed nearly three-quarters of a million applications using a real-time risk and decisioning platform.

Damelin continued: “We have made this app available as a free download from the Apple Store and, although it’s just as easy and quick to use as our existing web service, our unique technology will ensure we continue to make responsible lending decisions.”

Here at Wonga we strive to make our service better and our customers even happier every day. Sounds like classic business rhetoric? Well, we back our claims up with actions and that is one of the things that makes us different from traditional lenders.

If you haven’t yet noticed, our latest improvement to the UK’s fastest and most flexible loan service, is to provide Wonga customers with even more flexibility.

Customers and first-time applicants can now tailor their cash advances to exactly meet their needs. That was always the case of course, but there were some small restrictions and we don’t like restrictions when they aren’t serving a good purpose! For example, you had to take a loan for at least five days and the smallest cash advance we provided was £50.

Now you can decide exactly how much you want to borrow, from as little as £1! We also increased the upper limits you can apply for, to £400 for first time customers and up to £1,000 for trusted customers who use the  service responsibly. 

You can also now control the cost of your cash advance by picking the length of your loan from as little as one day! This way you only pay for the exact online loan you need - not something fixed that suits us!

As always, you can then manage your account online and even repay us early with no catches, should your circumstances change. It really is Money your way!

Our innovative approach to helping consumers manage their cash flow - with short term online loans available 24/7 - continues to be recognised by some of the UK’s most respected awards programmes.

It isn’t long since we were named Best Online Business of 2009 and now our technological innovation has been recognised again, this time by the nationwide Financial Innovation Awards. 

Wonga was selected as the Most Innovative Application of Technology for Customers at this week’s ceremony in London. We’re really honoured and will be adding the award to our growing Wonga wall of fame.

We’re also very proud to be finalists at the National Customer Service Awards this week, where we are in the running for Best Customer Service in Financial Services - having made it to the final from hundreds of entries. We’re keeping our fingers crossed but we are chuffed just to have made it this far.

Wonga launches its first ever TV advert this week, with the aim of letting even more people know about our flexible, online cash advance service. If you haven’t yet caught it on the box, you can check it out right here.

The theme is Money Your Way, because Wonga is the only lender in the land that allows you to choose exactly how much cash you want to borrow and then decide when to repay us, which determines the cost.

You can initially apply for any amount up to £400 and repay us between one and thirty-one days later. You can even repay early and save - with no catches because we are all about short term cash, not keeping you in debt.

We provide an instant decision around the clock and can send money to your account within minutes of approval - it’s a bit like having your own bank!

It’s that time of the year again - festive fun, parties, stressful shopping missions and seemingly endless costs - but Wonga is offering you the chance to win Christmas on us!

We have TEN cash prizes to pay out on Christmas Eve and all you have to do make sure your name’s in the hat is recommend our award-winning service to your friends.

The winner, to be chosen at random, will receive a cool grand in their bank and we’ve also got nine runner-up prizes of a handy hundred quid.

You can use our easy email form to send a message in a few clicks and we’ll even include a promo code for first-time customers as a little present.

You can find out more and see the T&Cs here. So if you are a happy customer and think you know people who genuinely might be interested in our online cash advance service, start spreading the word today for your chance to win Christmas on us!

Please note that we don’t tolerate spam, so please only tell people you know well and who you have good reason to believe might be interested in Wonga.

2009 has been seen Wonga on a roll, winning award after award!

A few months back we were nominated in the Best Online Business category of the prestigious Startups Awards, which celebrate the UK’s most outstanding young businesses and the people running them.

Startups Awards 2009 is organised by Startups.co.uk – the UK’s largest website for people starting and running their own businesses.

The winner of each category was chosen by judges including Doug Richard, founder of School for Startups and Margaret Manning, CEO of Reading Room.

They said: “the successful businesses and the people behind them proved their brilliance after fighting off competition from hundreds of entries.”

Friday the 13th was a lucky date for us, as we walked out with the coveted prize! A massive thank you to our customers for choosing Wonga and helping us ge where we are today.