Payday Loan Brick and Mortar Stores Versus Online Payday Loans

Payday loans have become a quick and hassle free way of borrowing money. With the wide spread of broadband Internet, online payday loan sites have turned out to be a reliable and more comfortable alternative to the traditional stores.

Availability and range of choices

There are probably a handful of payday loan stores in your area (unless you live in a really large city, where you might have a few dozens). Distances no longer matter with online payday loan sites; you will have equal access to all services available, whether you live in Seattle or Houston. And the more choices you have, the higher the chances that you come across an offer that suits your needs: simply shop around the thousands of offers out there and you will find the right one.

The comfort

You can apply to online payday loans from the comfort of your home. The money is a few clicks away – no need to drive to the other side of the town, spend hours in traffic and be tied to their work hours. Feel like applying at 2AM? On the lunch break? On Saturday evening, when you know you will be gone on vacation for the whole next week? Go for it.

Verification process

With brick and mortar payday loan stores, you will most likely be asked for an identity card. When applying online, however, you will probably be asked to enter your social security number and fax them a copy of your ID. The requirements vary from store to store, but common sense says that they somehow have to make sure that it’s really you who are applying and not someone impersonating you. Identity theft is a serious threat to everyone’s safety and should be treated as such. Therefore, online stores verify there customers more thoroughly, require more documents to be faxed in (or scanned and emailed) and are likely to phone verify each subscription. Hence, the online application process can be a bit more cumbersome than going to a brick and mortar store.

The costs

Last, but not least, online payday loan services have the advantage of lower operating expenses. Unlike brick and mortar stores, they have lower overheads related to rent and utilities, sales personnel and office space. They don’t print and distribute flyers, in fact hardly ever advertise offline, and all these translate into lower commissions for the end user.

Experts believe that traditional stores who don’t have an Internet presence will soon be driven out of business by their online competitors. These websites already control a large share of the market, have bigger revenues, bigger profits (due to lower expenses) and can afford to invest in researching and providing better products for their customers. Traditional stores can only focus on small regions, will pay fortunes to open a branch in another area and generally have a hard time entering other markets, hence they will have to make way for the online competitors who have country-wide reach.