Personal line of credit facilities are common in banking across the globe, but not so much in the UK. HSBC for instance offers them in Canada and the United States, but not locally for some reason. It is Indigo Michael Ltd that brought this niche to life in the competitive world of short term lending. Indigo Michael was established in summer 2011 and their first project (ClearAccount) would follow in 2012. SafetyNet followed in 2014 and soon after ClearAccount was dropped. However, step forward to 2017 and they would add Tappily to their product line. This differs as being a near-prime product with higher available borrowing sums and a lower rate of interest.

A single competitor had been taking on these sister-brands in Drafty who had arrived in 2016. Expectation was high on the success of this venture as it came from the same team as Lending Stream that is one of the leading instalment brands. There is however a new entry in the space. This is Polar Credit who arrive from Apfin who are otherwise known for Cash Asap. Some time back, MyKredit had also competed in this sector, but they opted to restructure their service. We did also spot Plane Saver, but skipped it since it’s a credit union, plus they strictly serve workers of airlines. Choice is certainly limited, but this should change, especially due to SafetyNet’s continued success.

About: Niche

LOCs work in a similar way to modern overdrafts whereby funds up to a qualified limit can be accessed 24/7. When funds are requested there is also no fixed repayment date, with interest being charged for the duration that money is borrowed. This could just be for a few days that may be handy to many people. Just to note that with SafetyNet/Tappily, the repayment will be taken if a wage (or £50+) comes into your account. This repays the interest, but you can then re-borrow straight away. Both noted brands do have interest caps in place, but these would only be met if you lost your job and had no further income hitting your account.

Minimum monthly repayments are also in place across the sites to make sure that the account doesn’t run into arrears. Drafty, Polar and Tappily offer competitive low rate loans that aren’t designed for those with lower scores. This leaves SafetyNet as the only subprime solution. Since this is a subprime offering you’ll typically be started off on a small limit of £200. You’ll interestingly however have a greater chance of acceptance here than other payday lenders since they have read-only access to your banking and so they can verify easily and monitor that a wage is coming in. The reason why banking access is required is that they offer overdraft protection that you can freely switch off.

Notes…

Alexa.com: Comparison listings are sorted by global traffic rankings.

Amounts: Borrowing amounts displayed are complete ranges (across every term available).

Banking: SafetyNet/Tappily each require banking access, but they are only granted read-only access that expires every 90 days.

Examples: £100 costs have been sampled across both 7 days and a full month. Just remember that with both SafetyNet/Tappily the repayment is taken on paydays and so for longer borrowing you’d need to re-request.

1) Drafty: £5.40

3) Tappily: £10.20

Feefo.com

3) Polar Credit: 90% (90+)

Prime: Drafty

If there’s a good chance that you’ll qualify across any of the 4 featured sites then Drafty would edge it. They offer the lowest rate and largest sums. As a reminder, they can send £3000 to new customers and £5000 to existing customers. Drafty’s leading £100 7 day price was £1.26 compared to Tappily’s £2.38. Tappily’s key advantage is their overdraft protection, but the collection of repayments when you get paid won’t be to everyone’s liking. To those that don’t qualify for Drafty’s service, it is likely that they’ll push declines on to Lending Stream. This lacks any kind of flexibility, with a fixed 6 month term attached. Polar’s recent entry has been interesting. They are the 2nd cheapest monthly, but we’ll need to see more of how they are being received as reviews start to pick up for that service.

Subprime: SafetyNet

SafetyNet is the only low score option, but the quality is certainly very high here. They had compared on an equal footing to Wonga’s flexible short term loan when they were active. One of the past things to nitpick at was that they did previously only lend as much as £500 that is much smaller than the industry norm. £500 is still in place for first time customers, but they have recently bumped up the potential reloan sum to £1000 that was a welcoming upgrade. This is overall the most well-rounded short term lender around. No other bad credit lender enables 24/7 payouts with flexible terms starting from just 1 day onwards. Reviews are excellent and they have now become the market leader in the payday loan sector.

Last Update: April 16th, 2021