Check Into Cash Celebrates 30th Birthday

Check Into Cash celebrates its 30th birthday this week with an optimistic future and a history of groundbreaking success, said officials. The company was founded in Cleveland by Allan Jones on June 21, 1993, although he admits he had no idea that Check Into Cash would one day have 4,000 employees. 

Check Into Cash, as part of Creditcorp, merged into the Community Choice Financial family of Dublin, Ohio, in 2021. On July 8, 2022, Community Choice Financial acquired Speedy Cash. Mr. Jones contributed additional capital to make the acquisition possible.

Mr. Jones said the path that led to the creation of Check Into Cash began when he left college at age 20 to help his father (William A. “Bill” Jones) stabilize the family's small business, the Credit Bureau of Cleveland. He purchased the business from his father in 1977 with 12 employees (five in the collections division and seven in the credit reporting division) and developed it to become the largest credit bureau database in the state, covering 63 counties. 

In June 1993, Mr. Jones had a collection agency serving communities across Tennessee, and in Atlanta. He had offices in Cleveland, Chattanooga, Nashville, Tullahoma, Murfreesboro, Cookeville, Jackson, Memphis, Dalton, Johnson City and Knoxville.

Mr. Jones sold the credit reporting side of the business to Equifax in 1988, although he retained the name and the company's collection agency. He then focused on collections and built the company to be the largest in Tennessee with offices from Memphis to Atlanta.

He sold the agency to a company called Asset Management Outsourcing from Atlanta in 1998. At the time of the sale, it was the largest collection agency in Tennessee – even bigger than the collection agencies in Nashville and Memphis. The company remains a tenant today at the Village Green. 
Mr. Jones got the idea for Check Into Cash in June 1993. 

“I had heard about a guy there named James Eaton who had a very successful business,” Mr. Jones said. “I was in Knoxville, when I heard about it. I left in my Piper Saratoga and flew to Johnson City to look at what he was doing." 

What Mr. Jones discovered was surprising. 

"Eaton was located in an old gas station," Mr. Jones recalled.  “He was charging his customers 20 percent for a payday advance. His customers were non-stop.” 

Mr. Jones said Eaton told him it was a lot cheaper than overdrafts, and he was bringing his customers value. This made a lot of sense to Mr. Jones. 

“Once I realized the value it was bringing to customers for such a small one-time fee, I realized this was a much-needed service,” Mr. Jones said. “The concept of a payday advance with a one-time fee was very simple. If your electricity is about to be turned off, or if you need to put food on the table for the kids, you can borrow just $100 and pay it back within two weeks for a small fee.”

Mr. Jones returned to Cleveland and opened his first Check Into Cash store on Keith Street in Cleveland 10 days later. He capitalized the business with $10,000. His second store was in Chattanooga and the third was in Athens. He then hired Steve Scoggins as president of the company. 

He admits he initially thought people would come in, take his money, and never pay it back. 

After a lull of a couple of days, the business began to be successful. The first Check Into Cash transaction was a young U.S. Army recruiter. 

"His son's birthday was that weekend, and he hadn't received his paycheck,” Mr. Jones said. “He used a $100 Check Into Cash payday advance to buy the boy a bicycle and was happy to pay us back the following Tuesday. The customer couldn’t have been happier.” 

Check Into Cash then began expanding to other communities across Tennessee.

"We quickly opened eight new stores,” he said. “Many of our customers were middle class and needed $50 to $200. We catered to housewives, nurses, and schoolteachers. We even had some key customers who were bank employees that needed to make sure their accounts didn’t get overdrawn."

Mr. Jones said that when he realized bad debt wasn't an issue, the business continued to expand. In August 1995, Check Into Cash had 18 locations. 

Mr. Jones then told Mr. Scoggins he was ready to invest $1 million of his own money in 42 locations. The idea was to have 42 locations on Mr. Jones’ 42nd birthday (Dec. 31, 1995). 

“I was financing the company out of my hip pocket,” Mr. Jones said. 

Mr. Scoggins was successful and by Dec. 31, the company had 63 locations. 

The business then went to Kentucky and Indiana.

In 1998, Check Into Cash got a new home when Mr. Jones bought the original Village Mall, which he later renovated and renamed The Village Green Town Center. 

Mr. Jones did not take a penny from the business over its first 10 years of existence. He put all of the money back into the corporation. He relied on his other businesses for personal revenue at the time.

Mr. Jones said a key to the Check Into Cash success story was always putting customers first. At its high point, the company had 1,325 stores in 30 states. 

"We worked with our customers, and we would talk with them, and do everything we could to help them. We even formed focus groups and listened to what their needs were.” 

Looking back, Mr. Jones realizes he watched an industry being born. 

“There were no regulations in the beginning,” he said. “Then I saw the first round of regulations, followed by a second round and then a third round and now there is the Consumer Protection Agency. Government regulations have made a small, short-term payday advance very complicated.” 

Mr. Jones said he merged Check Into Cash into the Community Choice Financial family in 2021 to ensure a strong future. The Speedy Cash deal was made for the same reason.

"The company feels like one big family now more than ever,” Mr. Jones said. “And we've been serving our communities and families for 30 years - that's definitely worth celebrating."

Mr. Jones is also looking forward to another birthday in July. It was on July 1, 1946 – two weeks after his discharge from the U.S. Coast Guard – that Mr. Jones’ father, William “Bill” Jones, purchased the Cleveland Credit Exchange from businessman Fred Dunham. 

The Cleveland Credit Exchange was organized in 1938 by a man named Mr. Richie for the Cleveland/Bradley County Chamber of Commerce.  The Chamber quickly sold it to Mr. Dunham. 

“After suffering through World War II and all of the soldiers being gone, Mr. Dunham was very glad to sell the business to my father,” said Mr. Jones. “Of course, the economy took off when the war ended, and dad did very well.”

Mr. Jones’ only employee at the Cleveland Credit Exchange was Margaret Wilkerson Duggan, who came to work in 1946. She stayed for the next 40 years, later working with Allan Jones and his children (Bill Jones’ grandchildren) Courtney, Wil, Abby and Bailey.  

Before the 2021 merger with Community Choice, Mr. Jones had 438 employees working in the downtown area. 

“Jones Management Services is the remnants of the old Cleveland Credit Exchange of 1938,” said Mr. Jones. “Today, both the original owner, the local Chamber of Commerce, and the purchaser of the collections company (Asset Management Outsourcing) are still tenants of the Village Green.”