Pounds to Pocket Alternatives

The short-term lender Pounds to Pocket is not offering any more loans at present, so where can their old customers go to find emergency cash loans in a hurry? Let us have a look at three alternatives: all of whom can supply cash quickly in the event of a sudden emergency, whether it is a large appliance breaking down, urgent cosmetic dental repairs or a pet’s medical crisis – the reasons for needing short term loans are many and varied and the amounts needed are equally diverse.

Loan Pig

Loan Pig is both a lender and broker (unlike Pounds to Pocket who were just a lender), which means that if they do not have a credit product that is right for you, then they will try and find you a loan from an alternative lender – one with perhaps less stringent criteria or more generous repayment terms according to your needs.

It also means that Loan Pig is able to offer a more varied range of APR with their products. Loan Pig, quite unusually for short term and payday lenders, will accept customers as long as they have a set ‘source of income’, rather than ‘income from employment’ as most other similar companies require. This means that they will accept benefits payments as proof of the ability to pay back, which means that some disabled people who have hitherto been unable to take out loans can now take advantage of borrowing when they have an unexpected expense crop up. You can borrow between £100 and £1,500 from Loan Pig to be repaid within 3 months to one year.

Loan Pig are FCA regulated, and, as such, they are required to ensure that customers are able to repay their loans before they are offered. Once the loan application has been accepted, the money will be paid out the same day if the application went through before 3 PM, the next working day if after that time. The whole process: application and repayment alike, is entirely online.

Sunny

Sunny is a short term lender, but they have a good deal of interest in ensuring the long-term wellbeing of their customers, recommending that their loans are not used to pay back other similar loans, and instead referring those customers to money advice services like the Citizen’s Advice Bureau, Money Advice Service and Stepchange who can help with financial understanding.

Instead, Sunny emphasise the emergency nature of their loans, citing expensive dental work, car repairs and similar unexpected expenses. Because of this, they will have the money into their customers’ accounts within as little as fifteen minutes from the application being approved. Customers can borrow anywhere from £100 to £2,500 to be repaid over 6 to 14 months with the terms being completely worked out before the loan application is finalised.

Once the money has been received, customers can still think twice – perhaps working out a different solution or being gifted the funds by someone – with the five-day cooling-off period during which no interest will be charged if the whole amount is returned (this is separate to the fourteen-day statutory period that all products and services are subject to, and no rights are affected).

Sunny charges no penalties for missed payments or short payments: the customer will always pay back the agreed upon amount even if they do not adhere to the repayment period. This can be useful so customers always know how much they owe, secure in the knowledge that the amount owed will never go up. Of course, there is a cost for the loan, but this is all included from the beginning, and there are no penalty charges for late or short payments.

Customers can, however, reduce the amount owed by settling up early. The whole process is fully online, with repayments charged to a nominated direct debit each month on an agreed date.

Wizzcash

Of the three Pounds to Pocket alternatives, Wizzcash offers both the lowest borrowable amount at just £50 and the shortest repayment terms, making it more of a payday lender than a short term lender. They offer repayment periods between one month and 36 months, with an average of 3 months.

Their APR tends to be very high, as is common with very short term loans. As Wizzcash are FCA accredited, they must ensure that customers can repay the loan and thus ask for their clients to have a minimum income of at least £750 per month from employment. Wizzcash does not necessarily examine credit ratings as a criterion for refusing a loan: if all the other requirements are met, a bad credit score may be ignored.

Once a loan has been approved, the money will be sent into the customer’s account that day, or the following day if left until late afternoon.

Wizzcash is expensive, however: to borrow £300 for 3 months, the customer will pay £150 per month for those 3 months. This means that they will pay back just over £450 in total, which may be considered eye-wateringly high for such a short period of time.