Young Swedes snared by expensive SMS loans

You can get a loan in Sweden via your mobile phone in seconds. It’s quite a neat service, from a mobile industry perspective. If you’re short of a few hundred quid (for example), you can text, text, text and woosh, get an unsecured credit line. Perfect for funding that hugely unnecessary iPhone purchase.

But the sting in the tail? Interest rates — that often are more expensive than the initial loan amount. When it’s so easy to take out the loan, fiscal difficulty can follow quickly. Tech.co.uk has more…

SMS loans sending young Swedes into debt – News – Tech.co.uk

Officials in Sweden have voiced their concerns that increasing use of so-called ‘SMS loans’ by young people is causing a mounting problem with debt.

The unsecured loans can be obtained by simply sending a text message to one of approximately 30 companies operating the money-lending scheme.

(Thanks Mark)