Warning: Late repayment can cause you serious money problems. For help, go to moneyhelper.org.uk

Instant payday loans

Instant payday loans are designed for people who need money in a hurry to cover an unexpected cost or to pay for an emergency when they can’t find the money from elsewhere.

It’s a big market here in the UK – millions of instant bad credit loans are taken out every year. Here’s what you need to know about instant payday loans and you.


Instant payday loans – borrower questions


How do instant payday loans work?

Virtually all payday loans are, in fact, instant payday loans. What makes them instant? Three things.

First, the application process is designed to be as quick as possible. Payday loan providers know that their borrowers often need money as quickly as possible to cover an unforeseen or emergency bill that they can’t cover from savings.

Second, once you’ve submitted your application form, it takes seconds for a lender to make a decision. They’ll either make you an offer or they’ll decline your application.

Third, once a loan has been approved and you’ve signed the online contract and agreed to the terms and conditions, the money could be on its way to your bank account minutes later*.

But what is a payday loan?

When you take out a payday loan, there’s only one repayment date. On that date, you pay back the original amount of money you borrowed plus the interest on top.

Thanks to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), payday loan borrowers have three extra layers of consumer protection. Payday lenders aren’t allowed to charge you:


  • more than 80p per day in interest for every £100 borrowed,
  • more than £15 in administration fees (for example, if you miss your repayment date), and
  • more in interest and in fees than the original value of your loan.

Although payday loans are very popular, a growing number of borrowers are asking for loans with multiple repayment dates. What that means is that, instead of paying the loan and the interest on the loan back in all one go, they split the payments over a longer time. Payday loans which are repayable over 3 months to 12 months are often called short-term bad credit loans or short-term loans.

Short-term loan repayments cost less than the one repayment on a standard payday loan but please be aware that you will pay more in interest overall with these types of loans.

Many short-term loan borrowers are also protected by the FCA’s payday loan rules.

Will I need a guarantor for a payday loan?

Most of the instant payday loan providers on our panel are used to working with people whose credit history is not perfect. Please don’t let the fact that you may have had financial troubles in your past put you off. Although your credit report is very important to a loan provider, they also consider your current financial situation in detail when they’re deciding whether or not to approve your application.

In certain cases, where there is a lot of adverse information on your credit report, you may be more likely to get a guarantor loan than an instant payday loan. To find out what a guarantor loan is, please click here for more information.

Can I get a payday loan with a bad credit history?

In most cases, people can get a payday loan with a bad credit history if:


  • they apply to the right lender,
  • the amount they want to borrow is acceptable to the lender, and
  • the reason they want to borrow the money is acceptable to the lender.

How can I improve my credit score?

There are lots of different ways to improve your credit score. There’s a great article on how to do so by Martin Lewis and Amy Roberts on the MoneySavingExpert website.

How can GrowingPower help?

With Growing Power, you can apply for an instant bad credit loan of between £100 and £10,000 with a choice of repayment periods of between three months and 60 months.

Are Growing Power a direct lender?

No. We’re what’s known as a broker. We don’t lend you any money ourselves. If your application is approved and you take out a loan, you and your lender have agreed to a new contract and they pay the money direct into your account.

Do Growing Power work with trusted and authorised lenders?

Yes. We only ever work with, and will only ever work with, lenders who are authorised and regulated by the FCA.

How does Growing Power work?

Growing Power is authorised and regulated by the FCA. We have a panel of over 40 lenders who are also authorised and regulated by the FCA. Our job is to match up borrowers with the lenders who are the most likely to approve an instant bad credit loan to them.

How do we do that? Whenever we accept a new lender onto our panel, we ask them a number of different questions which they answer in great detail to us. It’s that detail which allows us to find the right lender for the right borrower (subject to eligibility).

We ask lenders questions about the types of borrowers they like to work with. What we need to find out from them is how much they want you to earn as a minimum every month, how much debt you currently have with other finance companies, how much of your earnings do you have to spend every month (like on food, utilities, clothing, etc), and how long you’ve lived at your address.

We then ask them about the type of loan they specialise in providing. For example, what reasons are they happy for people to have to borrow money from them and also what reasons they won’t consider. What are the minimum and maximum amounts they’re prepared to lend and how long will someone have to pay back their loan, and so on.

When you fill in your application form, you tell us lots of different things that we then use to match you with the lender who would be the most likely to lend you money based on your current financial circumstances.

By doing that, we cut out a lot of time for borrowers who would otherwise spend a lot of time visiting lender’s websites without really knowing if they have a chance of being accepted.

We use what you tell us about yourself with what lenders have told us in terms of the type of borrowers they work with to increase your chance of getting a positive result.

Does GrowingPower or your lenders credit-check me?

Under the rules of the FCA, an affordability check must be run on each borrower – along with the credit check that all lenders are legally required to carry out.

When you fill in your application form, we send your details to the lenders most likely to be able to approve your application based upon the information you’ve told us about yourself. When they get your information, they then run a soft credit check on you – that’s like a background check. Don’t worry – only you can see soft searches on your credit report, other lenders can’t.

When all of the lenders have got back to us, we then transfer you directly to the website of a lender on our panel more likely to approve your loan and give you a competitive quote that you’ll be happy with based upon the information you’ve provided us with.

The lender then asks you for a few more details and, after you submit your answers, they’ll run a hard credit search on you.

Hard credit searches are visible on your credit report. One recent hard search on your report is not likely to affect your credit score. However, if there are a lot of hard searches in a short space of time on your report, this may negatively affect your credit score and it may make other credit providers less likely to lend to you. When you use Growing Power, only one hard search is ever carried out.

The lender whose website we redirect you to must run a hard credit search on you – it’s one of the regulations of the FCA and your potential lender must follow those rules.

Once they have run a hard search on you, they’ll then come back to you almost straight away with a firm offer or they’ll decline your application.

Working with GrowingPower:

By using Growing Power, you can get us to do the searching on your behalf to find a suitable lender. Please be aware that we can’t find lenders for all our borrowers in all cases although we try our very hardest to every time.

You should not take out an instant bad credit loan if you cannot afford to make the repayment(s) in full and on time. If you are in debt and you are worried about how you’re managing that debt, you may benefit from contacting a professional at one of the UK’s leading debt help organisation. To visit their websites, please follow the links - StepChange, PayPlan, National Debtline, the Debt Advice Foundation, the Money Advice Service, and Citizens Advice.

To apply for an instant bad credit loan, please click here. Our service is completely free and you’re under no obligation to accept any offer of a loan made by a member of our panel of lenders.

Representative example: Amount of credit: £1000 for 12 months at £166.67 per month. Total amount repayable of £2000.00 Interest: £1000.00. Interest rate: 498.8% pa (fixed).498.8% APR Representative.

Rates between 11.8% APR and Maximum 1721% APR. Loan term lengths from 3 to 60 months. There are no fees for our service.

Warning: Late repayment can cause you serious money problems. For help, go to moneyhelper.org.uk.
498.8% APR Representative.
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