I'm surprised that there are a lot of apps on Google play that offers loans similar to your friendly, neighborhood Bumbay a.k.a. 5-6. Unlike your 5-6 loan though, the Google loan apps doesn't require you to give daily payments. You could select to pay your loan on the 7th, 21st or 30th day.
I find this information useful especially if friends and coworkers are borrowing some money. I simply tell them that I don't have extra money and I refer them to these lending apps. I wish there are some referral options.
I've been trying some of these apps and convenience in using the app is a big consideration for me. Second will be the requirements they're asking you to send (via the app) in order to secure a loan. The less requirements and personal information, the better. Lastly, I'm also considering the rating that users gave these loan apps on Google Play. The higher the rating coupled with good reviews, the better.
The Upeso app has an issue with selecting the contact information. It's giving me the error message "select the correct contact", which I did, to no avail. So I didn't proceed with securing a loan from it because of this hassle. Not to mention that it's asking for a lot of personal information and 2 additional contact numbers. Plus it has a low rating at Google Play and comments include their loan officers calling the customers even after they made the payment. It only has 3.5 star rating on Google Play.
The Quick Cash 123 on the other hand, offers an initial P4,000 loan with a P550 processing fee which can be paid up to 7 days. If you're going to extend it to 30 days, you'll pay a total of P4,900. It's 22.5% interest rate which is higher than a 5-6 loan at 20%. It has 3.7 star rating on Google Play.
The Cashalo app on the other hand says it’s charging 3.95% monthly interest rate and you could loan from P2,000-P10,000. However, it’s asking for your bank details. It’s very similar to pera247 and PondoPero app that’s giving you a hard time to apply for a loan. Cashalo and PondoPeso both has 3.8 star rating on Google Play while pera247 has no rating on Google Play (it says also unreleased).
The Tala app is the best so far. It has very minimal requirement to secure a loan and lesser personal information is collected. I only needed to send a close-up picture of my UMID and a selfie picture holding the card. They approved my 1st loan within a day. I got P1,000 on my first loan, less the P45 processing fee that went to Cebuana Lhuiller where I pick-up my loan. The total amount that I paid was P1,125 and I paid it over the counter at 7-11. So P1,125 + P45 = P1,170.00 It is hassle free and regular SMS reminders were sent to remind me of my loan. That's a total of 17% interest rate.
My second loan was P2,000 and I didn't send any requirement this time. I just use the app, selected the P2,000 and got approved in less than 30 minutes. This time the processing fee is P80 which will go to Cebuana Lhuiller again. I selected the option to pay it in 3 instances --- each at P740 plus P15 payment processing fee at 7-11. That’s a total of P2,265 + P80 = P2,345 (compared to Upeso’s P2,500 payment if you loan P2,000). That’s 17.25% interest (compare that to the 20% interest of the 5-6 scheme). Tala loan has 4.8 star rating on Google Play.
There are a lot of other lending apps out there that we can try but that’s probably another time. Have you tried any of these loan apps? What's your favorite?
