Here's a new tribal lender, it's Virtual Cash Loans. The prediction that we would have over 400 Native American lenders by 2016 looks as though it's going to come true as new tribally-based lenders keep appearing.
Virtual Cash Loans is one of those new companies arriving into the online lending marketplace. The question for this firm will be is whether or not there will be enough space (enough customers) to make this business work.
One note about Virtual Cash Loans, their interest rates are not that bad. Now, that doesn't mean they are good by any stretch of the imagination because they are not good. If you compre their rates to a bank loan, or a personal loan, or a loan from Springleaf Financial, or pretty much any state licensed loan then you'll think the rates over at Virtual Cash Loans are quite bad.
However, since Virtual Cash Loans is a Native American lender we have to compare the firm against their peers. And up against most other tribal lenders it turns out that Virtual Cash is a little bit cheaper than most of the others.
Only there is one problem that makes itself clear right away with Virtual Cash Loans and that's the amount of money they are willing to lend to any given customer, actually more specifically their top tier customers.
The website displays a chart that goes from $250 to $3,000 as if that's the available range for loans. And that would make this lender similar to some other large scale, popular Native American lenders like Plain Green Loans and Great Plains Lending. But here's the catch, when you get into the FAQ section of the site you find the verbiage that talks about new lenders may borrow up to $1,000 and returning customers will be eligible to borrow up to $1,250.
Wait, so what's happening here? We have one page show a $3,000 loan that displays 38 bi-weekly repayment dates as if it's readily available to the customers who qualify with whatever requirements are needed (credit history, income level, how long a customer has been with their employer) and if those levels are reached then it would seem they could get the $3K loan.
However, that's not how it appears thanks to the FAQ page that tells us in black and white that returning customers can be approved for up to $1,250. Unless the top loan amount is available to returning customers who have taken out multiple loans? And they simply don't put this level of detail out on their site? They need to make some kind of distinction here so that potential customers are not inflated with the idea of getting a $3K loan, and then find out that the maximum of loan is $1K.
Virtual Cash Loans is not a bad lender because they do offer lower interest rates. At the same time I don't like them as much as Plain Green Loans or Mobiloans, who are more straight forward with the description of their loans.
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