Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

W onga.com’s business design is unremittingly cheerful. Make an application for certainly one of their loans that are online, supplied the job is prosperous, you’ll receive a few delighted communications, dotted with positive exclamation marks, providing a free account of this progress regarding the loan. “Great news! The cash will be to you in a jiffy.” And just a little later on: “Great news! We are able to verify ВЈ100.00 has just kept Wonga and it is winging its solution to your money in the rate of light (well, very quickly anyhow).” Repay it, and you will be given a grateful text that tells you: ” Many Many Thanks! We have simply gathered our Wonga payment without having a hitch therefore we’re all smiles.”

The company’s television and radio adverts have feel that is similarly light-hearted.

On tv, a trio of gurning puppet pensioners dance to accommodate music and give an explanation for tourist attractions of this Wonga model. The business’s other key advertising message is transparency, however these adverts make no mention of “representative” 4,214% APR put on loans.

Into the four years considering that the business established, the business enterprise has soared and an overall total of around 3.5m short-term online loans are made; the normal loan is ВЈ260 in addition to optimum is ВЈ1,000, initially for no more than thirty days. Wonga’s marketing invest has exploded from more or less ВЈ22,000 in ’09 to ВЈ16m last year, based on the analysts AC Nielson MMS, and also the brand name happens to be plastered over London’s buses in addition to shirts of Blackpool and Heart of Midlothian soccer teams.

Wonga defines its concept as being a convenient solution for an internet-savvy number of customers, the Facebook generation, folks who are accustomed getting things fast, whom feel “disenfranchised” from the conventional bank operating system. Loans could be made quickly of many smart phones additionally the cash is frequently sent to bank accounts in mins. Staff genuinely believe that over time their solutions may have the exact same revolutionary effect on banking as Amazon had regarding the guide industry.

Wonga contends that its success comes from a quick, hi-tech solution, maybe perhaps not formerly available. Experts claims it’s down to extending high priced credit – at mortgage of just one% each day – to folks who are not able to get cash through traditional, cheaper avenues. There clearly was a disconnect that is huge the Wonga administration’s view of the solutions and also the view from beyond its head office, where campaigners contrary to the quickly growing cash advance industry describe them as “immoral and unjust” and “legal loan sharks”.

There is certainly a similarly big gulf between just how it portrays its typical client (“young professionals who are web-savvy, fully-banked, gain access to conventional credit and an everyday income”), 95% of who, in accordance with its client studies, feel “satisfied” with all the solution, additionally the characterisation made available from financial obligation counsellors and MPs, who’re seeing more and more customers winding up in economic difficulty due to taking right out pay day loans.

People information states an increase that is fourfold couple of years into the amount of people with payday-loan-related issues.

A week ago, work of Fair Trading established overview of the lending that is payday, looking at all the firms providing these short-term short term loans, that are often paid back regarding the consumer’s next payday, in reaction to issues that “some payday loan providers are using individuals in economic difficulty” and never fulfilling “guidance on reckless lending”. The OFT said it aimed to push down organizations that aren’t fit to keep credit rating licences.

Wonga doesn’t expect you’ll be among the businesses driven from the market, in addition to business’s advertising strategy attempts to set Wonga apart from the myriad of evocatively called competing companies that are online provide cash if you Google payday advances: Kwikcash, Loans for Women, QuickQuid, Toothfairy, Payday UK, Payday Express, GetCashToday.co.uk and Peachy (which includes a “representative” APR of 16,381%).