The short answer to this question is yes, you can, but there are catches. No one gives money for nothing, that is a fact! And even if some companies appear to do so, there are always some things that won’t be placed on the table.

However, we are not against them, even if there are some catches. Even if there is a type of manipulation and catches, even if the loan you get is not exactly 0 interest, the way it’s been promoted, some of these loans could work for you. Below we will show you the best of them.

“0% interest loans do exist, but a lot of them do have fine print that makes them not as great as 0% or free sound,” says David Rae, certified financial planner and president and founder of DRM Wealth Management LLC in Los Angeles.

The improvement of the loan market leads not only to many new loan companies and loan products. New companies want more customers, and they use many promotional tactics to grow their businesses. This process also leads to many new types of loan companies. One of them is 0 interest loans. Sounds great – you get money, use them, give them in time, and pay nothing for that. But is this the truth?

ElitePersonalFinance reviews many different companies, and here is our answer to this.

Well, yes and no. It’s true that some companies offer 0 interest loans, but there are many catches. Let’s first tell you the most common of them, and after that, we will give you more detailed information and a list of the best companies who offer this.

0 Interest Loans: The Catches

• APR and interest rates are different things. One catch could be that a lender offers 0% or a very low-interest loan, but there are fees. Each loan has many fees. Some of them are the origination fee, application fee, prepayment penalty fee, late payment fee, etc. Some of these fees are flat, and others are counted on a percentage basis. Note also that some of them will be carefully revealed and correctly written in the contract and should be. In fact, every legitimate lender should disclose that to you. However, some lenders will try to hide them from you. This is typical for predatory lenders like payday and auto title lenders. So our tip here will be to ask for all fees and carefully review the contract, even if the amount is low. If you have any questions about the contract, always ask your lender.
• Late payment fees. This is a great way for a lender to make some money from your 0-interest loan. People who pay their fees on time have no interest. People who are late pay interest.
• 0-intro APR credit cards. Many credit card issuers offer 0-intro APR, but only for a limited period. After this period of time, the issuer starts charging you interest.
• 0 or very low APR credit cards. These are available, but they often come with a high annual fee.
• Low amount loans. Loan apps offer 0 interest loans, even to those with less-than-perfect credit scores, but their typical amount is like $100 to $500, no more. People who are interested in large amounts of loans can’t benefit from them. However, people with bad credit could find them as a great payday loan alternative! We will show you all of them below.
• Some companies charge monthly membership fees. In most cases, these fees are like $1 to $5 per month, making them look relatively low. However, people who plan to use them should make them count. How much money do you want, how often do you plan to get loans, and how much would you pay on a cheap personal loan instead of these fees. If you are looking for a one-time loan of $100, it could be reasonable to pay one-time interest instead of paying lifetime fees. However, those who plan to use these free loans could consider a loan app with a low monthly membership fee.
• Some apps offer free loans, trying to make you their customers and use more of their products. There are companies that really offer free-interest loans, and there are no catches. Then how do these companies benefit from us, you’d ask? Are Too Good to Be Truth offers recommended? In fact, some of these companies offer many other products like saving products, etc., by giving money, really with free interest, they hope to get a new client – you! This new client one day will probably start using other of their products. Or, this new customer will probably lead some people that he knows.
• Buy Now Pay Later is a new type of lending. Lenders give you money to buy products and then allow you to split your payments. Some companies charge 0 interest. Where is the catch then? It’s a type of manipulation. BNPL companies stimulate people to buy more than they want, and we explain this in our article.
• Most 0 interest loans come with not good repayment terms. Most of them require that you repay them in a month, like loan apps. Others like “Buy Now Pay Later Companies” require you to repay them in a few months, spread in partial payments.  This disadvantage doesn’t work well for people who want high amounts of loans. People using loan apps as a payday loan alternative will be happy to get $100 and pay back $100 in a month with 0 interest, instead of a $30 extra fee added from a predatory lender. However, people who apply for a $100,000 loan wouldn’t be able to repay this amount in one time.

What Are The Best 0 Interest Companies and Their Catches?

Below we will review a few of the best 0 interest companies.

ElitePersonalFinance has lists of all of them, which can be found here:

EPF Marketplace – Full List of Loan Apps with 0 Interest

List of the Best Loan Apps and Their Reviews

Best Buy Now Pay Later Companies 2022

Best Buy Now Pay Later Companies for Bad Credit No Credit Check 2022

Dave App

Dave is a well-known cash app, offering $200 with a 0% interest rate. however, the App charge

• $1 monthly fee.
• An express fee between $1.99 and $5.99 to receive funds within 8 hours.
• Tips up to 20% of the amount borrowed. According to Dave, the tips average at 0.05%, which is $1 if you plan to request their highest amount of $200 (Adding a tip for the paycheck advance feature means you’re paying to access the money you’ve earned.)

These fees definitely make the app a great alternative to predatory payday lenders. However, the remaining fee of $1 per month won’t attract those who don’t plan to use the service often.

Dave also hopes that some people will use their services, so companies give free or cheap-interest loans. Dave also offers:

• Spending accounts
• Credit building
• Budget
• Side Hustle

Do Traditional Personal Loan Companies with 0 Interest Exist?

The short answer to this question is no. As you can see, most of the loans mentioned above are actually relatively new types of loans, like loan apps, Buy Now Pay Later Companies, etc.

Online lenders, banks, and credit unions prefer to check your credit score, income, DTI Ratio, and other factors to determine your APR. However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t get a cheap loan. People with high credit scores get approved on very cheap personal loans. Typically personal loans’ APR starts at 5.99%, but we know companies that offer even less expensive loans.

Can I Get a 0 Interest Loan if I’m with Bad Credit?

The short answer to this question is yes. Believe it or not, that is true. Some companies don’t perform a credit check at all. Others have low criteria. Some companies offer low amounts of money and don’t waste too much time reviewing your credit score because the amount of money is low, which lowers their risk. For them, things look like this. Here is your interest-free $100. But the catch is that it is only $100. However, most of them will review your income, recent transaction, etc. Every legitimate lender should perform this check.

Can I Get Multiple 0 Interest Loans?

Good question!

$100 doesn’t look like a serious amount of cash. However, getting an amount between $100 to $500 from multiple companies makes sense. And if we add the fact that you pay no interest fees, things change.

You have to ask yourself if this is good for me and whether multiple lenders will allow that.

Here is our answer to that.

First, ask yourself whether this is good for you. As we said, most of these are a type of short-term loan, requiring one-time repayment of the full amount in a month. Others require the full amount in a few months. Even the amount could be split. Ask yourself will you be able to pay the amount back on time in a month?

Example:

Let’s say that you have found a way to get $5,000 from multiple places. Even if these loans are no-interest with no-catches (which probably won’t be the truth), you have to pay this money back in a very short period of time, like a month or a few.

Let’s compare this with a cheap personal loan. We will put an example APR of 10% and repayment of 3 years. In this case, our calculator shows a $161.34 monthly fee and $808.09 total.

Which of these repayments would you prefer?

What about the lenders and your credit score?

Indeed, some lenders won’t check your credit score at all and even won’t place an item for it in your credit score. This means that there is an obvious loophole in these loans. We can get many of them, and our next lenders won’t have the information about your previous loans, and we can cheat. But we don’t recommend this. This still puts us at risk. If we are unable to pay this money on time, we can have problems.

However, some lenders place these loans as a line in your credit score. Even if the amount is low, people with too many credit lines are considered a higher risk, only because of the highest number of loans, even if their total amount could be lower. A loan of $1,000 is considered a lower risk than 10 loans of $100.

In the end, these people risk being denied a personal loan and being unable to refinance many small loans in one big.

What is a Deferred Interest Credit Card?

Deferred interest allows you to make purchases on a credit card without paying interest fees on the balance you use, but this is only the promotion period for a certain period of time. Those who pay off their balance before the promo period ends will avoid the interest. However, those who don’t pay off their balance before the end of this period will have all the interest added.

So can we say that this is a real loan with 0 interest, or is it a scam? And the answer is, it is a type of promotional tactic that the issuer use. Issuers will make nothing from the people who pay their balance in full but make something from people who don’t pay them on time. In the end, the issuer also hopes that they have another happy client that will use their services again.

Conclusion

There are catches in 0 interest loans. Some of them come with some fee, hidden or no. Most of them offer relatively low amount loans with bad repayment terms. Some of them come with monthly fees. But they work for some people.

In the end. Even people with bad credit can indeed get approved. But this shouldn’t stop you from working on your credit score. People with credit scores always have higher chances of getting great offers and live their life easier and cheaper.