The night the fare doubled
Three weeks into my second semester in Stellenbosch I watched a one-way fare to Schiphol go from €310 to €480 in about four hours because a strike notice hit the wires and everyone with a flexible ticket rebooked at once. I didn’t have €480 sitting in my account, not after rent and a laptop repair that month.
What I had was a payslip from the campus library job and a phone, so I looked into a creditbar instant loan because the ad kept following me around and I figured it couldn’t hurt to check the numbers. The answer to the headline question, if you want it straight away: on a weekday afternoon the money was in my account in nineteen minutes.
On a Sunday night two months later, trying the same thing, it took until Monday morning. Same lender, same documents, same amount of panic on my end.
Hour by hour, not day by day
The common line you hear from other exchange students is that instant loans are instant, full stop, that’s the whole point of the name. That’s not quite true and the gap matters if you’re trying to lock in a fare before it moves again.
Weekday daytime applications, roughly 8am to 6pm South African time, get reviewed by an actual person…
