When a bill can’t wait until payday, a prepaid card could be the answer

What can a person do if he or she is struggling just to get by when they’re suddenly hit by a bill that they just hadn’t expected? It’s no longer as easy as it was before the credit crunch to take out a quick bank loan or just increase an overdraft. And even if a loan is forthcoming, applying and getting approval can take a while. Access to credit cards and increased credit limits can no longer be taken for granted. So perhaps it’s not surprising that according to a report published by the Co-op that about 25% of Britons are struggling to pay their bills*.

But a MasterCard® prepaid card could offer a great solution. After all, unlike with credit cards and loans, acceptance for a prepaid card is virtually guaranteed as long as the customer is aged 18 or over and lives in the U.K. And just as importantly, the Cashplus prepaid Gold MasterCard can now offer many customers a loan. This can be for up to £400, for as long as 25 days. And because the loan isn’t revolving, the customer shouldn’t feel that they may get trapped in a cycle of debt.

The iAdvance loan takes just a few minutes to apply online from the comfort and privacy of the customer’s home, and approval can be given in minutes. There’s no expensive set up fee, and Cashplus doesn’t penalise people that end up wanting to repay their loan earlier than they thought they would. In fact, because the loan fee is worked out on a daily charge basis, the quicker a customer repays the loan, the cheaper it works out.

In another move to provide as convenient a service as possible, the borrower doesn’t need to already have a bank account, as the loan will be placed straight into the cardholder’s Cashplus account. In fact, Cashplus will soon be offering loans to people that don’t even already have a Cashplus account. Aimed specifically at someone with a bill that urgently needs paying, the borrowed money can be sent by Cashplus straight to the company that issued the customer’s bill.

In short, anyone that feels that an unexpected yet unavoidable expense could hit them in the future should seriously think about the advantages of having this prepaid card in their back pocket. Then they can rest easy knowing that they could be in line for a loan to cover unexpected bills in minutes with the minimum of effort.