UK Artist Creates Payday Loan Store For Kids

C’mon kiddies, get your 5,000% APR payday loans!

At first glance, the bright blue London storefront with a hand-painted technicolor scene of a cartoon cityscape in the window — complete with a smiling yellow mascot — looks like some sort of kid’s toy store or maybe a daycare center. That is, until you see the sign that reads, “Payday Loans 4 Kids.”

The recently opened Pocket Money Loans, with its offer of 5,000% APR loans (available in only 3 minutes!) for the youngsters, is horrifying some Londoners — or at least those who don’t realize that this is not an actual predatory lending operation.

Instead, the storefront and its associated website are the creation of UK artist Darren Cullen, who is critiquing the way in which actual payday lenders market their products to youth in England.

“Almost all payday loan companies have cartoon mascots, animated characters or sing-along jingles in their adverts,” he explains to HuffPo UK. “Their high street shops often have play areas full of toys and some of them hand out balloons and sweets to kids at the counter.”

Several people, believing this is a real payday loan operation, have vented their rage at the store online, and Cullen says that one in-store visitor refused to believe that it was not actually offering these loans.

“Most of the people who come in just want to be reassured that it’s not real,” says Cullen, “but one guy left believing it was real even after I told him it wasn’t, shaking his head at me.”