Fast cash
Send a SMS, no credit check is necessary, and 10 minutes later you have cash in your bank account. In no other country than Estonia have SMS loans become so incredibly popular in so short a time period. Annual interest on these loans can be as high as 1000%. Still almost one out of ten Estonians have taken SMS loans, and the "industry" (if you can call it that) now has a turnover exceeding
1 billion EEK per year and is growing with 20% a year. There are 34 companies registered as SMS-loan providers in small Estonia.
Also the "normal" household loan level, like mortgage loans, was growing extremely fast. Of course the optimistic compared it to Western countries where levels were even higher. No one reflected over the fact that Estonia was still a relatively poor country with low salaries and almost no wealth accumulated. Banks were aggressively competing with each other for loan market shares. One Swedish bank came out with a TV advertising spot where the family was drilling under their sofa to discover oil. The message; your home can give you cash if you just increase your mortgage with us! Another financing company was instead showing an advertisement where you should press the right button on a queue ticket machine, after which the machine produces cash instead of a queue number slip.
Cash was easy. Cash was available for everyone. Cash was just waiting for your consumption. And if you were not drilling cash out of your sofa you were simply a loser.
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