In a battle between burger chains, Burger King just fired a significant shot at the competition. Earlier today, the company announced a new bid to help take some of the student loan burden off of college grads. The way they plan to do it is through their BK app in a program called “Whopper Loans”. Students have until June 6th to claim this help.
“65% of college graduates enter the world with student debt,” a Burger King spokesperson said. “BK App users can enter to win a chance at total student loan payoff.” Burger King says they’re looking to give away $250,000 in total to needy students. They enter for a chance to win by making a purchase using the BK App.
Currently in the United States, 44 million Americans owe $1.53 trillion towards student loan debt. This is a major crisis in the United States that isn’t likely to go away anytime soon. Some companies are looking to capitalize on this problem by offering some type of debt relief. 11.5% of borrowers are in serious delinquency.
“This is a nice gesture, and the students who benefit from it are very lucky,” Climb Credit CEO Angela Ceresnie told Yahoo Finance. “Millions of other students continue to take on heavy debt loads, and we need to shift the focus toward fixing the systematic problems that created this debt in the first place. If we don’t change something, we’ll be perpetually stuck playing catch up like we are now.”
Twitter Response
Burger King kicked off the initiative by making a cryptic tweet “Got student loans? What’s Your $cashtag”. A cashtag is what users of the Square Cash app call their user ID. This was enough to get the buzz out about Burger King’s new plan to help former students. Many thousands tweeted the burger chain their cashtag in response.
“$CalebSynan pay off my loans and I’ll never eat McDonald’s again,” said one user. “$evecoron10 if you pay off my loan I’ll actually start eating your food,” said another. There’s no word yet on if anyone has actually won any money or when Burger King plans to pay out. They also appeared to be networking with Earnest, which is a student loan refinance platform.
Earnest also tweeted out that Burger King customers would get a $200 bonus if they can show they made a purchase with the BK App. This buzz recently came after a billionaire entrepreneur told students listening to his commencement speech that he will pay off their student loans. Hopefully, more companies will seek to pitch in and reap the rewards of the attention they’ll draw to themselves.
With so many people struggling under the weight of student loan debt, it’s going to take help to start paying it down. Interest payments are swamping so many Americans and making it unlikely they’ll pay their debt down. In many instances, it can take a decade or longer. It’s forcing many young Americans to put off making major life decisions.
