Albert Cash Advance Review

Albert Cash Advance Review

Features of Albert Cash

With Albert Cash Advance, you can get up to $250 from your next paycheck sent straight to your bank account.

Albert Cash Advance (aka Albert Instant) doesn’t have late fees, interest charges or a credit check (not even a soft credit pull).

You can get your money instantly for a $3.99 fee or wait 2-3 days. One nice feature of Albert Cash Advance is that you can get cash advanced up to 3 times per pay period.

Cons of Albert Instant

One of the downsides of Albert Cash Advance is that it takes a while to qualify for the full $250 cash advance.

If you feel you’ll be using Albert Instant a lot, it makes sense to sign up earlier before you really need to draw on the full $250.

Once you borrow from Albert, they’ll pull money out of your account when you get paid.

They don’t know what other pressing expenses you might have, and they’ll keep on trying to pull money from your account until you fully repay back what you borrowed from them.

Finally, the app is constantly scanning your bank transactions to determine your credit limit so you might lose access to the product when you need it most.

How Do I Get A Cash Advance From Albert?

You can get started with Albert Cash Advance by signing up here!

To get started, download the Albert App.  It’s a common misconception but you don’t need to be subscribed to their Albert Genius subscription to access cash advances.

You’ll need to connect your bank account where you get your direct deposit from your employer.

This bank account needs to be open for at least 2 months and must have received consistent income for 2 months from the same employer.

Once they analyze your account, they’ll provide you with the amount that they’re willing to advance you now.

This number usually goes up over time as they trust you more.

If you get denied by Albert, you can always try other cash advance apps like Moneylion or Brigit.

They all have different criteria of how much they’re willing to give you as a cash advance and fintech companies are always getting into and out of the cash advance game.

Albert Cash Advance Competitors

While Albert is one of the leaders in the cash advance space, it’s a competitive field where many companies are competing for your business.

Some of the best alternatives to Albert Cash Advance include Empower, Brigit and Money Lion.

Empower vs Albert

Empower is a finance app that provides cash advances of up to $250 and your paycheck 2 days earlier.

It has a similar feature set to Albert.  One of the key differences between Empower vs Albert is that they don’t have fees for instant cash advances.

Albert and Empower both provide debit cards but Empower has better rewards while Albert allows you to invest and buy stocks.

Empower also has deals with some retailers where you can get as much as 10% cashback.

Albert vs Brigit

Brigit is another cash advance app that allows you to make cash advances of up to $250.

The key unique feature that Brigit has in the cash advance space is that it allows you to move your payment date rather than just withdrawing the money from your account when you get paid.

That can really help when you know you have urgent expenses that need to be paid first.

Other unique features of Brigit that Albert doesn’t currently offer include automatic overdraft fee protection and $1mm production from identity theft.

You’ll need to subscribe to their $10 a month subscription to take advantage of those features, however.

Moneylion vs Albert

Moneylion is another finance app that does cash advances and has a credit building service.

The most notable difference between Albert and Moneylion is that with Money Lion the maximum amount that you can cash advance is $1,000 vs $250.

To qualify for the $1,000, you need to subscribe to Roarmoney, and that $1,000 needs to be less than 30% of your recurring deposit cycle.

Money Lion also has more crypto products than Albert and a round-up product for savings like Digit or Acorns.

Other Reasons To Use Albert Instant

While Albert’s most popular feature is cash advance, Albert has other cool features that have made it one of the top finance apps in the Apple app store.

$150 Signup Bonus

If you sign up for Albert, you can get a $150 bonus.  That’s a lot more generous than the $100 bonus that mainstream banks give for opening new accounts with $100,000 initial balances.

Get Your Paycheck 2 Days Early

You can get paid up to 2 days early with Albert.  This feature works well with Albert Instant and can help you avoid late fees and asking your friends and family for money when you’re short.

Award Winning Budgeting Tools

Albert also has award-winning budgeting tools and a team of Geniuses you can ask for financial advice.

They help you take action – if you’re overpaying on phone or cable bills, you can sign up for a bill negotiation service to get them lowered right in the app.

What’s Your Next Step?

If you need cash fast, sign up for Albert and other cash advance apps.

It’s smart to sign up now because many of these apps only allow you to withdraw the maximum amount if you’ve been a customer for a couple of months.

You can get started below.

About the author

Samantha Arevalo is a money expert who has been featured in Yahoo, MSN, and The Penny Hoarder. She's always looking for the money hacks that will get her and readers one day closer to financial independence.