What actually happens between applying and getting paid

Four fields: how much you need, your name, your email and your mobile number. That is the whole first stage — no documents, no uploads, no phone call, and nothing that commits you to borrowing.

You start it on the application page. Nothing you enter here is shared with anyone until you accept an offer, and you can close the tab at any point without leaving a trace on your credit file.

What we ask for, and what we do not

We do not ask for your Social Security number, your employer, your rent, or a scan of anything at this stage. Those questions come later and only if they are needed. A first screen that demands your SSN before it will quote you a rate is a screen designed to capture you, not to help you.

Ask for the smallest number that solves the problem

It is tempting to round up. Resist it. On an interest-bearing product every extra hundred dollars carries its own interest for the whole term, and the difference compounds faster than people expect. Borrowing $2,000 over 12 months at a sample 89.99% APR costs about $1,102 in interest. The same rate on $1,000 over six months costs about $411. Half the amount over half the term is roughly a third of the cost.

The term you pick changes the payment more than the rate does

A longer term lowers the monthly payment and raises the total. A shorter term does the reverse. There is no universally right answer — the right answer is the shortest term whose payment you can cover every single cycle without needing to borrow again. A payment you can only just afford is not affordable.

The calculator on the homepage prices both plans against your exact figure, and loan amounts shows a worked example for each common amount.

First, confirming who you are

Federal rules require every lender to verify a borrower's identity before extending credit, so this step is not optional anywhere — it is the "know your customer" check. In practice it means confirming your name, date of birth, address and Social Security number or ITIN against public and credit-bureau records. It happens electronically and usually takes seconds.

Occasionally the automated check cannot match you — a recent move, a name change, or a very thin file will do it. When that happens we ask for a photo of a government ID and sometimes a document showing your address. It is not a red flag and it does not mean the answer will be no.

Then, linking the account your pay lands in

This is the part people hesitate over, so it is worth being precise about what happens. You log in to your bank through an encrypted connection. We receive read-only access to your transaction history. Your banking username and password are never shown to us and never stored on our systems.

What we actually read

We look at 60 to 90 days of account activity, and we are looking for four things:

When linking does not work

Some accounts cannot be connected, and it is better to know that before you start.

Most decisions come back in a couple of minutes. Nobody reads your application by hand unless something in it needs a human, and the wait is usually shorter than the time it took to fill in the form.

Rather than a single take-it-or-leave-it number, you then see every product you qualify for at once, each with its full cost written out. Depending on your income and the amount you asked for, that might be one offer or four.

How to read an offer

Each one shows the amount, the APR, the payment, how many payments there are, and the total you will have repaid at the end. The last figure is the one to compare between offers — a lower monthly payment stretched over more months is frequently the more expensive choice, and the total is where that shows up.

The APR is the honest comparison number because it folds fees into the rate. It is also the number that makes short-term credit look expensive, which it is. We would rather show it plainly than bury it.

What it costs

Nothing is added after you sign. There is no application fee, no fee for paying early, and no charge if a payment is returned. The membership plan carries a flat monthly fee and 0% interest; the pay-as-you-go products carry interest and no subscription. The full schedule for every product is in the rates and fees table.

If you do not like any of them

Then close the tab. Seeing an offer commits you to nothing, and declining one does not affect a future application. The soft inquiry we ran to produce it is invisible to other lenders and does not affect your score.

You accept an offer, and the funds are sent to the account you linked. How fast they land depends on the product, the time of day, and your own bank.

Cut-off times

Why express is sometimes not instant

Express delivery pushes the money over the instant payment rails rather than the standard batch system. That only works if your bank is on those rails and has the feature switched on for inbound transfers. Most large banks and neobanks are; some smaller institutions and a few credit unions are not. If yours is not, the transfer quietly falls back to standard delivery and the express fee is not charged.

Weekends and federal holidays pause standard transfers because the batch system does not run. A Friday afternoon approval with standard delivery generally lands Monday. Express still works at weekends where the bank supports it.

Our guide to same-day funding goes further into which banks support instant transfers and what to do when a payment is stuck.