Our founder & CEO has just scooped a prestigious Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award , after being chosen by the independent panel of judges, chaired by former Rank Group CEO Ian Burke.

Sponsored by Credit Suisse and hosted by the BBC’s Jeremy Vine, the awards dinner was held in London last night and Errol competed with over 50 inspirational business leaders across London and the South.

We’re all as pleased as punch for him because it’s one of the world’s most prestigious awards for entrepreneurs. The scheme encourages entrepreneurial activity and recognises the contribution of people who inspire others with their vision, leadership and achievement.

It’s also an incredible achievement since it’s Errol’s fourth major entrepreneurial award in the last 12 months and his sixth since starting Wonga! Others include the TechCrunch Europas, Founder of the Year; Fast Growth Business Awards, Entrepreneur of the Year; Digital Entrepreneur of the Year and Credit Suisse Entrepreneur of the Year. Errol will go on to compete in the national round for online products and services this October.

We’re proud to add it to the awards cabinet and are delighted for all the other winners too. It was a great evening.

At Wonga headquarters we’re very excited. That’s because it’s the two weeks of the year where we try our best to support the Brits at tennis whilst enjoying our favourite summertime treats such as strawberries and cream and Murray mints. Murray mints you ask? Indeed, we’re handing them out for each game the mighty Andy Murray wins, what’s more, we’re giving away vouchers for strawberries and cream whenever it takes our fancy. Not to be forgotten is the main cash draw after the Men’s Final on 4th July where each entrant has a chance to win a share of £300.

All you need to do to be in for a chance of winning is visit our Facebook page and play our mini video game, ‘WongaTennis’. It has been a massive ‘hit’ (excuse the pun) so far with thousands of Wonga’s Facebook fans. In the style of the famous tennis games we all grew up with in the 70’s (if you’re that old!) users can access it through the Wonga.com Facebook fan page and within seconds be playing our simple and fun video game. Scoring is the same as traditional tennis games in a quick ‘best of three’ format, plus we’re awarding style points for how quickly you can beat your opponent. We’re big on the community feel with the use of global Leaderboard and another one just for your Facebook friends tracking high scores. Don’t worry if you’re not a video game ‘geek’, win or lose you’ll be entered into the draw for Cash and prizes.

Once again we’re proud to be bringing something new and exciting to the public arena that reflects the essence of what we stand for as a company – speed, flexibility and control. Have fun playing WongaTennis and of course, supporting the Brits!

We today wrote a public letter to Stella Creasey MP, in response a series of tweets about Wonga and further concerns raised by her in the press.

Here at Wonga we are immensely proud to have won a 2011 Red Herring Top 100 Europe Award. The Red Herring Awards celebrates achievements of the top private companies in Europe and the exceptional accomplishments of entrepreneurs. The winners were chosen by Red Herring’s editorial team who analyzed hundreds of cutting edge companies and technologies.

The Top 100 Europe are evaluated on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, technology innovation, quality of management, execution of strategy, and integration into their respective industries. The Red Herring editors were among the first to recognise that companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Skype, and eBay.

This award is a welcome recognition for Wonga having previously making it onto Red Herring’s prestigious Global 200 roll of honour in 2008. The accolade is deserved recognition for everyone in the team and caps a fantastic year so far for Wonga. There was tough competition and we would like to commend the rest of the winners.

Wonga beats 50 of Europe’s hottest internet companies at Europe’s ‘digital media Oscars’.

At Wonga.com we’re delighted to announce that last night we were named overall winner at the Media Momentum Awards in Barcelona – scooping the prestigious ‘Judges Award’. We won the award following a successful pitch to some of Europe’s top digital media movers and shakers, including investors, CEOs and founders from companies such as Playfish, Xing and Net-à-Porter.

Europe’s 50 fastest-growing digital media companies were invited by the judges to participate in the awards, which are now in their seventh year. From these 50 companies Wonga was chosen to be honoured with the Judges Award, which is widely acknowledged as one of the most coveted awards for Europe’s digital media companies.

Previous winners of the Judges Award include vente-privée.com, Moneybookers and YouGov. This year’s Judges Award for Wonga follows the “Fastest Growing Company” award that Wonga won last year.

Errol Damelin, CEO and founder of Wonga, said:

“This is a great win for the whole team at Wonga. We’ve worked really hard to build a service that customers love and a technology platform which is truly innovative. It’s terrific to be recognised by our peers for this.”

We’re proud to add it to the awards cabinet and are happy for all the other winners.

At Wonga HQ we’re keeping everything crossed for this Sunday’s game between Man United and Blackpool FC. There’s been a lot of banter this week including various sidebets, however, we’re all in agreement that the boys will be getting our all-out support from 4pm on Sunday.

Not only will we be biting our nails whilst the mighty Seasiders commence battle at the Theatre of Dreams, we’ll also be closely following the other matches that may affect our outcome. A real rarity, we even have the Arsenal fans in our ranks (there are one or two) supporting Spurs, in the hope that they hammer Birmingham to help Blackpool’s cause!

We were having a browse of the Blackpool Gazette and came across this uplifting quote from ‘Pool defender Ian Evatt:

“You can go on about ifs and buts, but as long as we win I’m sure we’ll be OK and that’s what we have to focus on. We won’t be thinking of what’s going on anywhere else.

“On our day we are capable of matching any team in this division, including Manchester United.

“We are desperate to stay up. I think this town deserves Premier League football, but above all I think this group of players do.

“What they have achieved for Blackpool FC in the last few years is nothing short of fantastic. No matter what happens, it has been a fantastic season and I’m sure our supporters are very proud.”

At Wonga.com we would be absolutely made up if the Tangerines can stay up. The excitement has got to us over the last couple of weeks as you can see from our Facebook page. We’ve been running a ‘C’mon Blackpool!’ prize draw awarding an extra £100 for every point the team have earned in their last two games. In addition, for those die-hard fans there’s also two signed shirts up for grabs for sending us your favourite pics from the season. Here’s one of our favourite pics, check out our recent good luck message we flew over Bloomfield Road..

Let’s hope we’ll be doing a Wonga Conga come Sunday evening!

There was an interesting article in yesterday’s Sunday Express, about the likelihood of the high street banks needing to balance their books, following a high court ruling on the miss-selling of payment protection insurance or ‘PPI.’ These insurance schemes were a staple revenue generator and partly why the banks could enter into an arms race to offer loans with lower and lower headline rates.  

So while it may seem like a consumer victory on the one hand, and no doubt it will be for many, it could also see new or bigger charges appearing elsewhere, as the banks seek new ways to replace the lost income and the compensation likely to be paid out. Here’s an extract from the piece:

Some commentators believe the total cost could be considerably higher, increasing the likelihood that banks will try to recoup their losses by raising the charges on other services.

Tim Kirk, head of financial services at accountant BDO, said: “If banks cannot make money cross-selling add-on products such as insurance, we will move closer to an end of free banking.

“Cash machines and other banking services need to be paid for, so it should be no surprise if in future we see charges applied to all current accounts as is common practice in other countries.”

Free banking has been sustained through cross subsidisation, whereby a majority of customers enjoy largely free services – losing the banks money - whilst another smaller, yet significant portion of customers get hit with high fees if they stray over their agreed limits. Some argue there is sense in this system, with cautious bank customers who never exceed their limits not subsiding others, but it has led to opaque ways of generating cash and commercially unsustainable products (at least unsustainable without the cross subsidisation model).

Following an enthralling first season, we have today agreed a two-year extension to our sponsorship deal with Blackpool FC. We have thoroughly enjoyed our partnership with BFC so far and we plan to continue creating activities to entertain the crowd at Bloomfield Road on match days. We will also provide fans with further opportunities to win money-can’t-buy prizes.

Karl Oyston, Chairman of Blackpool FC, expressed his pleasure at the news, saying: “I am delighted the club has the security of a shirt sponsor for the next two years and without doubt they have been the best shirt sponsor we have ever been involved with. Not only have they committed a substantial sum of money to the club, they have been actively involved in fund raising for the Jimmy Armfield statue with the BSA and they have also made significant donations to several local charities. I know from my own experience the half time Wonga Cash Dash Zorb race is something different.”

Our founder and CEO was equally pleased, saying: “We have really enjoyed our first season as main sponsor and it’s been just as exciting as we predicted. We’re looking forward to building on our relationship over the next two seasons and we hope the supporters have enjoyed the activities we have run so far, such as the Wonga Player of the Month programme.”

Everyone at Wonga is behind the Seasiders for the remaining games of this campaign. The club has undoubtedly won a lot of new friends over the season. UTP!

Wonga has agreed a two-year sponsorship with Heart of Midlothian Football Club. The deal will see us replace Ukio Bankas on the front of the Edinburgh club’s shirts for all matches from next season.

We are already the main sponsor of Blackpool FC and the broadcast partner of The FA Cup on ESPN, so this link-up with Hearts sees us move into Scottish football for the first time, which is a proud and exciting moment for everyone here. Hearts Managing Director David Southern said:

We are delighted with this new sponsorship deal. It is a first for Hearts and for Scottish football and is reflective of our aim to attract new top class corporate partners to Hearts. Wonga is an excellent national financial brand with a drive and determination to expand and, as one of the country’s leading football clubs, we are looking forward to developing a partnership that will deliver significant benefits to both parties.

Hearts is a club with a great history and they are having a really strong season, so we were keen to support them when the opportunity came up. They show real class, on and off the pitch, and we can’t wait to start being involved from next season onwards. We have a lot of happy customers in Scotland and, like us, many are passionate footy fans, so we hope the partnership will benefit supporters, the Club and our brand.

There have been a lot of stories recently covering the amazing level of complaints about high street banks over the second half of last year. New figures from the FSA showed complaints were up by 3% and the overall volume of issues equated to 10,000 dissatisfied customers every day!

The big banks have been through a lot of well-publicised upheaval in recent times and earlier this year the FSA fined RBS and NatWest over their poor handling of complaints. It’s not that surprising they have seemingly forgotten why they exist – to serve customers.

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