Updraft helps people pay off credit card debt. It is a UK lender, authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, built on three straight steps: see what you owe, see what it is costing you, and pay it off faster.
Most Updraft members are working people with two or three credit cards, often an arranged overdraft as well, keeping up with the minimum payments but never quite getting ahead. Updraft replaces the juggling with one fixed-rate loan, one fixed monthly repayment and a known end date, so for the same monthly outgoing, more of your money clears the balance and less feeds the interest.
It starts with the full picture. Connect your cards and accounts in the free Updraft app and every balance appears in one place: each card, each overdraft, the interest being paid on each, and a payoff timeline that shows how long the balances will take to clear at your current rate of payment. Everything you owe sits on one screen, and you can disconnect any account at any time.
Card debt is quiet. The minimum payment keeps the card provider happy while the interest keeps the balance alive, and an arranged overdraft can sit at close to 40% EAR for years. The Updraft app shows what your connected balances are costing you each month and how long minimum payments really take, and you can run your own numbers through the payoff calculator without borrowing anything. A cost you can see is a cost you can plan against.
Then the loan. Tell Updraft which cards and overdrafts you want to clear, and they become one fixed-rate loan: one monthly repayment, a rate fixed for the whole term, and an end date you can see. Loans run from £1,000 to £25,000, over one to five years, with rates from 15.3% to 41.2% APR that are personal to you, and the typical loan is around £5,000 covering two or three cards. An arrangement fee is included in the total amount repayable and shown up front, there are no early repayment charges, and the live figures on updraft.com are always the authoritative ones. Consolidation only makes sense when it costs you less overall and the cards are actually cleared, so every number is there to check before you commit.
Representative example: 25.9% APR Representative based on a £10,000 loan over 60 months at 20.40% fixed interest p.a. Monthly repayment: £283.20. Total repayable: £16,992 (inc. £600 fee). Subject to status and affordability. Consolidating debt may increase the term and total amount repaid. All figures are representative and based upon an assessment of credit and affordability. Terms and conditions apply.
On approval, the money goes straight to the card providers, so the balances are cleared rather than moved, or to your bank account, typically within days. That is the honest difference from a balance transfer: a 0% transfer moves the debt to another card and the interest returns when the promotional period ends, while an Updraft loan is built to repay it. From then on it is one fixed monthly repayment for the agreed term, with your progress visible in the app.
You should not have to gamble your credit file to get a straight answer. Updraft runs a soft search first, so you see your eligibility and your rate before any full application, with no impact on your credit score. The full application is a hard search; the check is not. If the numbers work, carry on. If they do not, you have spent a few minutes and nothing else.
A credit score tells part of the story. Updraft reads the rest, assessing affordability on your actual income and spending, through open banking data alongside your credit file, not the score alone. So if a high street bank has said no, it is worth finding out whether Updraft's answer is different. There is no guarantee of acceptance, only a decision based on what you earn, what you spend and what you can genuinely repay.
The Updraft app helps you see and pay off your credit card debt, and it is free on iOS and Android. Accounts connect through open banking provided by TrueLayer, authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (firm reference number 901096). The connection is read-only, so it can never move money, and you can disconnect any account whenever you like. To take a closer look at the app, the full tour is a tap away. Inside you will find:
Updraft is for working people across the UK who use credit to afford everyday life and want to tidy it up: nurses, teachers, IT workers, mid-level managers, small business owners and couples with young children, from London through Birmingham to Glasgow. To apply you need to be a UK resident with a regular income, a UK bank account, and card or overdraft balances you want to pay off. If any of these sound like you, you are in the right place:
Updraft starts after the spending, not before it: it does not fund purchases, and it is not debt advice or debt relief, but a regulated loan for people in work. If you are in financial difficulty, the right first stop is free advice from StepChange, National Debtline, Citizens Advice or MoneyHelper.
Over one million members have turned to Updraft, and more than £750 million of credit card and overdraft debt has been paid off (company-stated, September 2026). The public voted Updraft Best Personal Finance App at the British Bank Awards 2026, and the team won Best Marketing Campaign of the Year at the Credit Awards 2026. Members rate Updraft 4.88 out of 5 on Smart Money People from more than 11,000 reviews, 4.5 on the App Store and 4.8 on Google Play, and ratings move, so read the live reviews on Trustpilot for today's picture.
Updraft is operated by Fairscore Ltd, trading as Updraft (Companies House number 10868865), and is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, firm reference number 810923. Lending is backed by institutional partners including NatWest, Jefferies and Santander CIB, with offices in London, Manchester and India. And when you need help, customer support is human: real people who know the product, not an automated adviser.
If you want the detail before anything else, see how Updraft works from first check to final repayment, and read the MoneyTalk content hub for plain answers to questions like "should I get a loan to pay off my credit cards?" For research and numbers from the team, explore the latest Updraft insights. When you are ready, the first step costs nothing and leaves your credit score untouched: check your rate with a soft search, see what one loan, one payment and one known end date would look like for you, and go from there. Credit that lifts you.