Internet Pawn: Assest Backed Loans

Image credit: Getty Images, Todays like no yesterdays/Flickr

In her book Payback, Margaret Atwood writes that loans are “like air, it’s all around us, but we never think about it unless something goes wrong with the supply.”  The similarly intangible internet is expanding to bring a pawnshop to consumers struggling in the United States.

Enter Internet Pawn, a new website that offers a range of loans based on personal assets.  Simply FedEx your valuable and the company will determine their value and offer a loan ranging from $500 up to $250,000.  The loans can take as little as 24 hours to be approved and after the loan is returned, the items held as collateral are returned.  If a customer chooses not to repay the loan, the items are sold and any remaining difference is returned to the customer.  Most loans last approximately six months and it will be interesting how this experiment in web-based pawn works in a struggling marketplace, it certainly worked for Cash4Gold.

[via Murketing]