Online payday loans have been popular for a good while now, but throughout the years there has always been two payday loan companies that have took the headline as being the major payday loan lenders. These major payday loan lenders are PaydayUK and QuickQuid who have always had an incredible search engine presence that has allowed them to flourish in the industry. They have always deserved the praise as being the two payday loan giants for the efficiency and quality of their loan products, but there is a new payday loan lender in town that has not just caused a mere splash, yet we are talking more along the lines of a tidal wave. We are of course talking about Wonga.com, who are a London-based outfit that only actually surfaced in October 2007 and so they have come a long way in a small duration of time.

You wonder how this has all happened so quickly? One of the key aspects here is offline advertising. I have spotted QuickQuid appearing on TV commercials, but they tend to appear through the mornings (not really peak time). Wonga have been showing TV commercials through peak times and this has really helped to raise the brand awareness of Wonga. What has been more impressive is that Wonga.com is that they are now the shirt sponsor for the Premier League new boys Blackpool FC! Much focus in the world of football is on Blackpool because few people believed that they could reach the Premier League and they are now getting major features on Match of the Day with the bright orange shirts and one of the first things that you see is the Wonga.com sponsorship across the front.

This has been key to their success, but another area has been their search engine presence. At this time they rank in the first few spots at Google.co.uk for the terms “payday loan” and “payday loans”; they even rank in high spots for these terms at Google.com. You imagine that this has been aided by the brand being discussed and linked to by all of the major media sites. PaydayUK and QuickQuid don’t rank as well as they once did due to Wonga flying up the chart and they both don’t have the offline advertising boost that is there with Wonga. In regards to the loan product, there aren’t many unique loans like Wonga around today. They have actually tried to differentiate themselves as not being payday loan lenders, by promoting themselves as cash advance lenders and short term loan providers.

This makes sense for Wonga, as they don’t go down the traditional payday loan route whereby the borrower has to pay back the money at the end of the month. Instead, the borrower can choose the exact day that the loan will last for and so the money can be borrowed for a few days, or a week, or two weeks and so on. This flexibility is impressive, but the quality of the loan product is so high for other notable reasons such as them sending the cash to your account in under 15 minutes and there is no faxing required so you receive a very speedy service from them. When you add online account management through their clean and well branded website you look at them as a really well-rounded loan provider here in the UK.

It will be interesting to see if we spot more loans like Wonga in regards to the flexibility of the borrowing; Speed-E-Loans would probably be the most similar at this time. Is Wonga the perfect payday loan (perfect cash advance loan)? Well, PaydayUK and QuickQuid can match them in most areas, but they simply don’t have the same reach at this time to the British public. One thing that seems apparent has been that Wonga have always been fairly strict with who they accept for loans, but I did receive notification that they have become more lenient and so I have no idea how they match up in that regard. It has been very interesting to see the “Wonga boom” and their savvy sponsorship of Blackpool FC, the TV commercials and the excellent search engine presence will allow them to continue to thrive. The other payday loan lenders must now play their cards right, as Wonga have set a leading example of how to get things just right.

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