Where Short-Term Loan Funds Actually Go: What Our Client Data Shows

We looked at anonymized, aggregated banking activity from 737 recent AppleTree Cash clients in Ontario and Saskatchewan to understand how loan proceeds are actually being used — and where the biggest risks to financial stability show up.

Short-term loans exist to bridge a gap — a bill due before payday, a car repair, an unexpected expense. But what happens to that money once it lands in an account? Rather than guess, we looked at real transaction category data across a sample of our own client base, fully anonymized, to see what the numbers actually say.

The goal isn't to judge how people spend their own money. It's to point out the patterns that tend to correlate with financial strain, so borrowers can make more informed decisions and build toward not needing a short-term loan next time.

Where every dollar goes

There are two honest ways to slice this, and they tell slightly different stories, so we're showing both rather than picking one.

Table 1: Share of total dollars moved

Add up every dollar across all 737 accounts, then see what share of that combined total went to each category. This is weighted toward clients who moved more money overall.

Table 2: Average share per client

For each client, work out what percentage of their own spending went to each category, then average that percentage across all clients. Every client counts equally here, regardless of how much money moved through their account.

*Rent/housing is likely undercounted, since many clients pay rent by cash, e-transfer, or as part of a shared payment our category detection can't isolate. Both tables based on anonymized, aggregated bank transaction data from 737 client accounts (Table 2 uses 715 accounts with categorized spending greater than zero), 2025–2026. No individual account, name, or identifying detail is included.

What this means in practice

A few things stand out when you look past the headline numbers:

• Loan-stacking is the real risk, not "vice" spending. Gambling, alcohol, and cannabis together show up in a minority of accounts, and at modest typical amounts. The far more common and consequential pattern is carrying payments across multiple lenders at once, which compounds cost and makes any single loan harder to clear.
• E-transfers and cash withdrawals are the largest dollar categories. These aren't spending categories on their own — they usually represent money moving to cover something else (rent, family support, another obligation) that our data can't categorize further. It's a reminder that loan proceeds are rarely spent in one place; they get redistributed across several obligations at once.
• NSF fees appear in about 1 in 6 accounts. Even a modest median of $48 adds real cost on top of an already tight budget, and is one of the more avoidable categories here with basic account monitoring.

Why we're publishing this

We have a clear view of how our loans get used, in aggregate, and think that's more useful shared than kept internal. This isn't a judgment on any individual borrower's choices — it's a starting point for a more honest conversation about what actually drives repeat borrowing, and it's the same data we use internally to think about responsible lending practices.