“Be careful, with mini-loans, interest rates rise very quickly and if you don’t repay immediately, the bailiffs harass! » Alexander (name has been changed) knows what he’s talking about. This 26-year-old student found himself in great financial difficulty after having subscribed in three clicks to two mini consumer loans of 200 euros at Floa Bank via the Lydia mobile payment application.
A student loan on his back, and another consumer loan contracted at the start of the Covid crisis, the young man did not manage to repay his last debt within the allotted three months and sank into the spiral of over-indebtedness. Because if a mini-credit can help out, it is better to have cash before borrowing. “It was the end of the month, I was in trouble: my classic bank card was blocked because I had exploded the ceiling for withdrawals but I needed cash urgently,” he says.
Bailiff calls every two days
“I had only seen that the mini-credit rate was almost 20%! The detail is however on the website but you really have to go looking for it to find it. Consequence: Lydia’s bailiffs called him every “two days, in big arm mode”, before “threatening to go to court”. To get out of this dead end, a new schedule, this time spread over six months, has been agreed.
Does he regret having subscribed to these small credits? “No, because I had no choice and it still pulled me out of the rut at a critical moment,” he explains. On the other hand, he assures him: “On a larger sum, I would never have taken out a loan with such a rate. »
Many people around him use the mini-credits that some of his friends use to play online. This is particularly possible thanks to the ephemeral cards offered by Lydia, widely used to pay for purchases on the Internet. They can be controlled from your phone thanks to the app, which allows you to quickly change the withdrawal limits and thus prevent online bettors from arousing the attention of their banker.