Talktime loans are everywhere nowadays. Almost every telecom company provides talktime loan VAS to their users. Such a facility is quite useful when you’re unable to top up your talktime balance.

Talktime loan? WTH is it?

For instance, you are stuck somewhere in the middle of the night where recharge hubs are never to be found. You are running out of talktime credits.

Now you really need to make a call, obviously because you are stuck somewhere late in the night.

What would you do?

You’d make use of a talktime loan facility, however only if you know what is is and how to make use of it.

A talktime loan is a value-added service to grab a small, short-term credit loan straight from the carrier. In other words, you can call it an emergency recharge.

Now this comes in handy when you are out of money or don’t have access to recharge voucher hubs.

Note: The term loan in this article refers to prepaid mobile talktime balance only.

It is obvious that you have to pay back the loan amount later with some additional service charges. Airtel was the first to introduce a balance loan service in India in the year 2009.

Talktime loan guide for Indian telecom providers

Let’s see how to avail talktime loan with some leading telecom companies in India. Click the links below to skip to loan procedure for the respective telecom service.

  1. Airtel
  2. BSNL
  3. Vodafone
  4. JIO

Note that many major providers are defunct now. Some of them got shut down, some got merged with another popular provider. That’s because of A taking over B, C going bankrupt, and others getting their licences cancelled. Here is some more info in addition.

Talktime loan USSDs in 2020

  1. Airtel (Rs. 10)

    Being the very first to start talktime loan feature in the country, Airtel allows you to take a loan of Rs. 10 when you have balance less than Rs. 5. Below are the instructions you should follow to enjoy it on your prepaid connection.

    • Dial *141*10#. After that, you receive a menu with some options as listed below:
    • Reply with 3 (the option that says Take Advance Talktime / Ask for Talktime)
    • It will again show you 3 options. Reply with 1 (the option that says Take Rs. 10 advance talktime (main account)
    • It will again prompt you with a message that says “For Rs. 10, we will recover Rs. 12 and balance will be recovered any time.“
    • Again reply with 1 and you will receive the loan within a few seconds.

    Note that you’ve to pay back Rs. 12 on the next recharge.

  2. Vodafone (Rs. 5-25)

    A few users know that Vodafone provides 3 types of balance loans on prepaid connections: Rs 5, Rs. 10, and Rs. 25. And unlike Airtel, it allows you to take loan regardless of your current balance amount. That’s cool!

    The simplest way to get a credit loan of Rs. 10 on Vodafone is to send an SMS to 144 with CREDIT in the message body.

    For a loan of Rs. 5 or 25, you need to call 1241 from your Vodafone prepaid and follow the instructions on the call.

    After that, you have to pay Vodafone Rs. 6 for Rs. 5, Rs. 12 for Rs. 10, and Rs. 28 for Rs. 25 loan on the next recharge.

  3. BSNL (Rs. 10)

    Being the eldest of all telecom providers in India, BSNL finally allows its users to ask for credit loan of Rs. 10. Send an SMS CREDIT to 53738 to get the loan, but make sure your current balance is less than Rs. 10 and more than NILL (0).

Wonder why JIO didn’t make to the list? Because JIO doesn’t really provide any talktime loan facility for now.

In conclusion

And above all, the loan amount will get recovered from your account on the next recharge done within next 24 hours. Some extra fee might also get levied as service charges.

And that’s about it. I’ll keep you posted about the changes providers do in the respective USSD numbers. Like, share or comment if this post has helped you to get an emergency recharge.