Wonga calls for tougher rules on payday loans However, the South African-born entrepreneur said that he wished politicians would stop using the company as the industry's whipping boy. I think there's a political dimension to what's happening, clearly, and I think it's a shame that companies that are employing hundreds of people, paying lots of tax, talked of globally as leaders in their field, are used as political footballs. I think it would be great for us to get on with building our products and servicing our customers and feel like we're involved in a political process. I hope that in the long term we get to a different place from a regulatory perspective. Mr Damelin also addressed concerns about the company's interest rate, which rose recently from 4,214pc to 5,853pc as the company attempted to give its 1m customers a better example of the costs of borrowing. "It's not arithmetically incorrect," he said of the 5,853pc annualised percentage rate (APR). But our customers continue to tell us it's not a meaningful metric in terms of cost for this particular product. He pointed to evidence that its customers prefer a "total cost of credit" rate which shows how much they are repaying for every £100 borrowed. In May, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee concurred with that view, saying in a report that using APR as a measure of the cost of loans was "outdated and misleading."