The Cash Store had 27 branches in the UK and over 500 in Canada where they also often used the Instaloans branding. The Cash Store Financial Services Inc (owner) that was formed in 2001 however hit bad times, entering bankruptcy, with the British arm ceasing trading in August 2014. This was a good while ago. The reason why we have covered them now is that we have only recently started to investigate payday lending on the high street and their network was quite sizeable at 27. Their head office was in fact located nearby to us in Stockport. The business had been loss making for some time and they were relying on their Canadian parent company to stay afloat.

The much larger Canadian operation itself crumbled through class action lawsuits, disputes with affiliated firms and tighter government regulation. They had ventured to the UK in 2010 that was when they had created www.cashstoreuk.com. Online applications look to have been taken here from 2013 onwards. They were qualified as both a broker and as a lender. However, from browsing their site over time through The Internet Archive they always noted that the pricing would be determined by whichever lender was used and that a typical 25% charge would be in place. They didn’t disclose the ins and outs of their service, primarily alerting visitors to the various documents that needed to be shown when visiting.

Monthly Cash Store loans was the primary focus, but they also promoted cheque cashing just as much on their site. This company likely suffered from heavy competition from big firms like Converters, Generator and The Money Shop. Incidentally, The Money Shop’s owner (DFC Global) controls Money Mart in Canada that was their main rival, with each sharing a similar level of market share. Part of this business was sold on to Money Mart when they closed down. The www.cashstoreuk.com site has remained live for now where it informs of the administration. All of the British accounts were sold on to SLL Capital who have been chasing up monies owed at www.sllcapital.co.uk/cashstore. You can securely pay here.