Wonga customers can continue to use Wonga services to manage their existing loans but the UK business will not be accepting any new loan applications.
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A spokeswoman for the company emailed us the below statement: A decision has been taken to place Wonga Group Limited, WDFC UK Limited, Wonga Worldwide Limited and WDFC Services Limited into administration.
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Wonga said its overseas businesses were not part of the announcement.
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Wonga is now in the process of appointing Grant Thornton as administrators.
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Years later, even though Wonga didn't work out, she's still betting on India.
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This is by no means the first time Wonga has attracted negative headlines.
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Wonga — which is reportedly close to shutting down — didn't ultimately pursue that opportunity.
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THE collapse last month of Wonga, a payday lender, was cheered by many Britons.
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Wonga has also taken a hit from compensating borrowers for its debt-collection practices.
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Unlike Wonga and its ilk, ZestMoney is very much a consumer-centric loans company.
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Earlier today it emerged that Wonga had stopped accepting loan applications from new customers.
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The demise of Wonga may stop some Britons finding themselves in such desperate financial situations.
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Although it is perhaps the most notorious lender, Wonga is not the only one struggling.
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She led Accel's investments in Avito (Naspers), Lyst, Spotify, Wallapop, KupiVIP, Calastone, Wonga and SilverRail.
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We've reached out to Wonga with questions and will update this story with any response.
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Already last year wonga sold off its German payments business, BillPay, to Klarna — raising around £60M.
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Wonga said on its website it received 24,814 grievances in the first six months of 2018.
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In February it acquired from Wonga a PayPal competitor in Germany called BillPay for $75 million.
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Wonga, Britain's biggest payday lender, went into administration following a surge in compensation claims from disgruntled customers.
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UPDATE Aug 30: Shortly after this article was published Wonga said it was putting itself into administration.
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Wonga was Britain's largest provider of short-term, high-interest loans before going into administration last August.
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Prior to the latest emergency funding, Wonga had raised a total of around £230M, according to Crunchbase.
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Wonga has been in trouble for some years, after regulators clamped down on the payday loans sector.
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In a call with Cleo co-founder Barney Hussey-Yeo, he told me that the idea for Cleo came when he was at Wonga, the controversial payday loans company, where he previously worked in the data science team (Wonga co-founder Errol Damelin is also an investor in Cleo).
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Wonga is not the only payday lender to be hit by an increase in complaints since 2015. tmsnrt.
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Wonga agreed to pay compensation of more than 2.6 million pounds ($3.22 million) to 45,000 customers in 2014.
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In addition to the PROfounders portfolio companies, he has in the past worked closely with others such as Bebo, Wonga.
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It says it does not believe customers' Wonga account passwords were compromised but suggests concerned users change their password anyway.
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She led Accel's investments in Avito (acquired by Naspers), Lyst, Spotify, Wallapop, KupiVIP, Calastone, Catawiki, JobToday, Wonga, Shift Technology and SilverRail.
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Wonga, the biggest provider of payday loans in Britain, said it was considering "all options" amid reports it is close to collapse.
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Though the VC firm did not take an investment in UK-based payday loans firm Wonga, which collapsed into administration last week.
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After a spell consulting, Chapman reunited with her former Wonga India colleagues Ashish Anantharaman and Priya Sharma and the trio launched ZestMoney.
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Wonga said the surge in claims was driven by so-called claims management companies, firms that help consumers win compensation from businesses.
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Regulatory changes introduced by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which came into force from 2014, have undermined Wonga and other lenders' business models.
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Wonga said in an email that it had decided to place a number of its operations into administration, a form of creditor protection.
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Despite close ties to Wonga, it's fair to say that ZestMoney comes at the problem of consumer loans from a totally different direction.
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Four years later Wonga is still paying the bill for its past conduct — in the form of increasing numbers of individual compensation claims.
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Britain's biggest payday lender Wonga collapsed into administration last week, following a spike in compensation claims and a regulatory crackdown on its business model.
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Wonga had just raised 10 million pounds ($13.01 million)from investors amid a surge in compensation claims related to loans taken out before 2014.
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LONDON (Reuters) - Thousands of consumers seeking compensation for alleged mistreatment by bust British payday lender Wonga have been "left to fend for themselves", lawmakers said.
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Wonga shot to prominence in the years after the financial crisis, filling the gap left by big banks as they retreated from short-term lending.
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All in all, the approach runs in stark contrast to the ratchety terms that Wonga and others force on consumers who use their credit services.
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He was a leading backer of the "Wonga Coup", a farcical plot by British and other mercenaries to topple the government of Equatorial Guinea in 2004.
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The round is being led by Playfair Capital, with participation from Amadeus Capital, Passion Capital, Errol Damelin (founder of Wonga) and Paul Foster (founder of Indeed.
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Wonga has since made an attempt to reinvent itself — with a focus on flexible loan products — but the costs associated with its legacy behavior kept rising.
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Justin Ward, a fisherman from Wonga Beach, said he found two of the migrants on Sunday afternoon on a mangrove bank while traveling from Snapper Island.
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Moving more aggressively into consumer finance would mean stronger competition for British lenders Provident and Wonga, among the biggest providers of small consumer loans in Poland.
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LONDON (Reuters) - British lawmakers have called for better access to compensation for consumers when finance firms collapse, after unresolved complaints against failed payday lender Wonga hit 40,000.
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Wonga claims make up around 20 percent of Allegiant's business today, she said, adding she expects the industry's attention to turn to its rivals after Wonga's demise.
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LONDON (Reuters) - British lender Wonga has warned customers in Britain and Poland that their personal data may have been stolen in the latest major corporate security breach.
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It also has taken on more assets to expand its footprint: specifically in February it acquired from Wonga a PayPal competitor in Germany called BillPay for $75 million.
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Also participating is former Spotify CMO and now Atomico partner Sophia Bendz, Supercell founder Ilkka Paananen, Moo co-founder Richard Moross, Wonga founder Errol Damelin and Climate Corp.
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Wonga had already been struggling following the introduction by regulators in 20.7690 of a cap on the interest it and others in the industry could charge on loans.
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A source close to Wonga said the data could include the addresses and bank account numbers of up to 270,000 past and present customers, including 245,000 in Britain.
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Wonga itself paid a big price for its practices, and the company is now bankrupt (and apparently still unable to replay creditors, as of the last report in March).
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It was the disaster of Wonga — and an article in the WSJ about alternatives to payday loans — that Briffett said got him thinking about the possibilities and building Wagestream.
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He's joined by Zoopla co-founder Alex Chesterman, Wonga co-founder Errol Damelin, Albion co-founder and Atomico Executive-in-Residence Jason Goodman, Atomico Partner and The Climate Corp.
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In a statement issued to Sky News, a Wonga Group spokesman said there has been a "marked increase" in compensation claims for legacy loans driven by claims management companies.
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The trio — pictured at the top — met working at Wonga after Chapman moved to India from the UK to head up the controversial pay-day loan company's local business.
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The London-based startup, which was founded back in summer 210, counts the founders of Zoopla and Wonga among its investors, along with Kindred Capital and M&C Saatchi.
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Wonga, Britain's most well-known lender offering short-term, high interest loans, often to troubled borrowers, collapsed in August after being hit with a deluge of compensation claims from customers.
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Back when Wonga acquired it, we reported that the company had 20053 million users and agreements with 3,500 sites/online storefronts, with annual transaction volume of €300 million ($409 million).
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Wonga is warning affected customers to be "extra vigilant" and to alert their bank of potential risk — though it says it will also be contacting financial institutions about the breach.
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Small wonder that many Britons welcomed the news this week that Wonga was apparently nearing collapse, seeing it as a sign that the country had kicked its reliance on such lenders.
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Wonga, founded by South African entrepreneur Errol Damelin, also ran into trouble because of its debt collection practices, including sending customers fake legal letters, which were exposed by Britain's consumer watchdog.
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Its brands QuickQuid and Pound to Pocket together racked up 4,561 customer complaints, up from 1,447 in the previous six months and more than the 4,513 the FOS received against Wonga.
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Payday loan firm Wonga has suffered a data breach affecting up to 245,000 customers in the U.K. A further 20153,000 customers in Poland may also be affected, according to the BBC.
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A decade ago, his Black Beach prison held Simon Mann, a British mercenary who was sentenced to 34 years for his role in the botched "Wonga coup" that tried to topple him.
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In one of the latest reported attacks, payday lender Wonga said earlier this month that up to 270,13 customers in the UK and Poland may have been affected by a data breach.
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Calling itself a "digital mortgage broker," Habito was founded by Daniel Hegarty, who was previously an early employee at Wonga, to remove a lot of the friction when applying for a mortgage.
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Runner Up, Our Sun: Sun Flower Corona, Catalin Beldea and Alson WongA composite of 12 images taken during the total solar eclipse on March 9, 2016 from Tidore Island in Eastern Indonesia.
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But unlike payday loan companies (such as Wonga), which also offer a short term borrowing facility to mobile users but typically charge very high rates of interest, Dave's payday loans are 0% interest.
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"Given the role that claims management companies had in putting Wonga under, it is likely that they will now be circling on the other payday lenders," said Colin Jackson, financials analyst at Goodbody.
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On the other hand, Funding Circle didn't actually need the money, but this is a critical time for lending startups, given some of the scandal we've seen around some like Lending Club and Wonga.
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On the other side, Wonga is retreating from its ambitions to pivot its business (or at least expand it) from loans to payments — which had been its original intention when it acquired BillPay in 2013.
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Also participating is Brent Hoberman's Founders Factory, and angel investors Errol Damelin (Wonga founder and renowned fintech investor), Richard Glynn (former Ladbrokes CEO and founder of Alinsky Partners) and David Pritchard (founder of OpenTable Europe).
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LONDON (Reuters) - The collapse of Britain's biggest payday lender Wonga is likely to turn up the heat on its rivals amid a surge in grievances by customers and calls by some politicians for tighter regulation.
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Original story follows below… UK payday loans firm Wonga, whose investors include high profile European VC firms Accel and Balderton, appears to be teetering on the brink of collapse as it's stopped taking new loans.
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"The FCA will continue to supervise Wonga once it is in administration and is in close contact with the proposed administrators with regard to the fair treatment of customers," Britain's financial watchdog said in a statement.
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Such borrowers pay high rates on short-term loans from so-called payday lenders like Wonga, and when buying furniture and electronics from weekly payment retailers like BrightHouse, as well as higher pre-paid energy tariffs.
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Photo: Getty / Alex WongA few months after Trump's inauguration, an attorney appointed by the president to a top post at the Justice Department produced a memo in which he outlined the administration's views on congressional oversight.
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Privately owned Wonga, which initially enjoyed rapid growth via its short-term, high-interest lending, often to troubled borrowers, fell into difficulty after regulatory scrutiny of so-called payday lenders led to a cap on interest rates.
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The debt collector, which had planned to appoint Crook as its chairman in preparation for the London listing, said on Friday that Andy Haste who is also chairman of British lender Wonga, would be its chairman elect.
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"His big mistake was getting involved in a big and dangerous game, the worst-conducted coup plot in years," says Nigel Morgan, an ex-spy who helped to thwart the Wonga Coup and who interviewed Mr Calil afterwards.
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After all but disappearing in the aftermath, the demand they left behind was met by so-called payday lenders like Wonga which drew heavy criticism for interest rates as high as nearly 6,0.75963 percent on short-term loans.
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Lambeth Palace ordered an investigation in 2013 after the Financial Times disclosed the Church's pension fund had invested in one of the financial backers of Wonga, a payday lender described by the Archbishop of Canterbury as "morally wrong".
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Recently, CMCs have been seen as a key driver in a rise in the number of claims against payday lenders suchg as Wonga, which collapsed into administration this year, citing a sharp rise in complaints against the company.
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A coroner's report in 2014 noted that on the day Kane Sparham-Price, an 18-year-old, hanged himself, Wonga had taken from him part-payment for a debt, emptying his bank account and leaving him in "absolute destitution".
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LONDON (Reuters) - Complaints about British payday lender CashEuroNet UK shot up by more than 603 percent in the first half of this year - more than double the rate that drove rival Wonga into administration, data published on Wednesday showed.
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The startup's early investors already include Entrepreneur First, Moonfruit founder Wendy Tan White, Skype founder Niklas Zennström, Wonga founder Errol Damelin, and LocalGlobe, the seed VC firm founded by father and son duo Robin and Saul Klein, amongst others.
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After all but disappearing in the aftermath, the demand they left behind was met by so-called payday lenders such as Wonga, which drew heavy criticism for interest rates as high as nearly 6,000 percent on short-term loans.
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A coroner's report in 2014 noted that on the day he died, Wonga, a provider of short-term, high-cost credit, had taken from him part-payment for a debt, emptying his bank account and leaving him in "absolute destitution".
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Wonga was the most high-profile of a group of high-interest, short-term lenders that sprang up in Britain in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, whose marketing tactics and four-figure interest rates drew strong criticism from lawmakers.
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This week the Church held a series of meetings to discuss buying the loan book of Wonga, a lender that recently went into administration, in order to prevent the debts of its borrowers being sold to another high-interest loan firm.
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By 4603 rising concern about the rates of interest being charged to vulnerable customers on short term loan products led to a regulatory intervention to clean up the sector, and Wonga agreed to write off the loans of 2460,22017 customers.
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But no need to worry, you can post comments about it on Facebook or Twitter, maybe borrow a few hundred quid off Wonga and boogie on down to the corporate festival of your choice, complete with security and sniffer-dogs.
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Yesterday Sky News reported that those same two, Accel Partners and Balderton Capital, are among a group of Wonga investors that have agreed to inject a further £10M (~$13M) into the business to help fund compensation claims related to its past censured practices.
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On weekends, braver kids than I went 'bush-bashing' on foot, using crooked branches to beat away kangaroo grass, wonga vines, and spiny mat rushes, or the stout, prickly shrubs nurseries referred to as dillwynia retorta (but everyone else calls eggs and bacon).
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Today, Klarna, the startup out of Sweden that works with online merchants to enable flexible payment options, confirmed that it has acquired BillPay, a payments company based in Germany, from its previous owner Wonga, the startup that once achieved notoriety for predatory payday loans.
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Chowles explained that included tracing a loan from payday loan company Wonga in White's name, which was then sent to cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox, which then transferred bitcoin funds to the StExo account on Silk Road and paid for some items on the site.
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Although Wonga attracted substantial tech investment for a real-time automated decision-making platform for affordability checks, it ended up having to write off the loans of 330,000 customers, and waive the interest and fees for a further 45,000 — raising questions about the efficacy of its algorithms.
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Meanwhile, alongside TriplePoint, Cleo is backed by some of the biggest VC names in the London tech scene — including Balderton Capital, Entrepreneur First, Moonfruit co-founders Wendy Tan White and Joe White, Skype founder Niklas Zennström, Wonga founder Errol Damelin, TransferWise founder Taavet Hinrikus and LocalGlobe.
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Already backed by some of the biggest VC names in the London tech scene — including Entrepreneur First, Moonfruit co-founders Wendy Tan White and Joe White, Skype founder Niklas Zennström, Wonga founder Errol Damelin, TransferWise founder Taavet Hinrikus and LocalGlobe — Cleo is adding Balderton Capital to the list.
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To that end, Tide has secured over $16 million in funding to date from VCs including Creandum, LocalGlobe, Passion Capital and fintech specialist, Anthemis, as well as well-known angel investors including Errol Damelin (Wonga), Alex Chesterman (Zoopla/ZPG) and William Reeve (Lovefilm, Graze, and currently CEO of Goodlord).
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In addition to the two Kleins, also present are LocalGlobe Partners Suzanne Ashman Blair, who has a background in impact investing; Tara Reeves, who was previously Head of Product at Wonga and co-founded peer-to-peer car sharing marketplace Turo; and George Henry, who worked in venture support at Index.
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If you were at Disrupt London four years ago you may remember more than a little awkwardness during an investor panel when two VCs that had invested in European payday loans firm Wonga declined to comment on what had gone wrong at their portfolio company in the wake of a £220M write down.
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Following the shredding of its original business model — with the FCA's cap of 0.8 per cent per day for all high-cost short-term credit loans applying from January 2015 — Wonga has been loss making for the past several years, reporting a £20173M loss for 2016 and just over £80M for 2015.
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Some other attempts have been scandalously disastrous, however: recall "Payday Loan" provider Wonga, backed by an illustrious set of investors but ultimately accused of, and hit hard by regulators and the public for, preying on people who were in need of funds with loans that were not transparent enough in their terms and led the borrowers into deep debt.
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Cyber attacks have recently affected other British banks, businesses and institutions, including Tesco Bank, Lloyds, Talk-Talk, and the National Health Service "Wonga is urgently investigating illegal and unauthorized access to the personal data of some of its customers in the UK and Poland," the firm, which offers short-term unsecured consumer loans, said in a statement on Sunday.
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In Britain such lenders include pawnbrokers, offering an APR of between 25% and 101% for a secured loan; doorstep lenders such as Provident, the biggest, which will charge an APR of 1,558% for a 13-week loan; "payday lenders" such as Wonga, which offer similar rates for a loan to be repaid after 1-2703 days in one lump sum; and "rent-to-own" lenders, such as BrightHouse, which offer finance for purchases to be repaid in instalments.
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