Key takeaways
- Four universal requirements: 18+, U.S. residency, regular income, and an active checking account in your name.
- Lenders verify the present tense — recent deposits and account health — more than credit history.
- Five silent disqualifiers decline otherwise fine requests; all five are preventable.
Bear loan requirements are refreshingly short compared with bank lending, but "short" isn't "optional" — each item gets verified. Here's the complete list, why each exists, and how to prepare so one form is the only form you fill.
The four universal requirements
1. Age and residency
You must be at least 18 (19 in a couple of states) and a U.S. resident. Contracts with minors aren't enforceable, so this one is checked against your ID without exception.
2. Regular income
Employment, self-employment, or qualifying benefits such as Social Security or disability all count. What matters is a pattern of deposits — lenders read cadence and consistency, not job titles. Gig income qualifies when it lands regularly in your account.
3. An active checking account in your name
The account is the loan's plumbing: funds arrive there, repayments leave from there, and its recent history doubles as underwriting evidence. Accounts opened weeks ago, or littered with recent overdrafts and returned payments, are the most common quiet reason a request fails.
4. Working contact details
A reachable phone and email — lenders confirm identity and send documents through them. A typo in either can end a request before it starts.
What individual lenders add
On top of the universal four, specific lenders may set a minimum monthly income (often around $800–$1,500 for the amounts we cover), request a pay stub, benefits letter, or recent bank statement, and confirm your state — since availability and maximums are governed by state law, as the CFPB's state-by-state resources explain. Have your most recent proof-of-income document within reach; requests that answer a verification ask within hours fund noticeably faster than ones that answer in days.
The five silent disqualifiers
| Disqualifier | Why it kills a request | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| Numbers that don't match verification | Reads as misrepresentation, even when it's optimism | Use exact figures from your pay stub |
| A brand-new bank account | No history for the lender to underwrite | Apply after ~90 days of activity |
| Recent returned payments | Predicts a failed repayment withdrawal | Keep 90 clean days before applying |
| An open loan of the same type | Many states and lenders prohibit stacking | Finish one loan before requesting another |
| Savings-only or prepaid accounts | Repayment plumbing doesn't work | Route the loan through a standard checking account |
Bad credit is not on the list — read that twice
Notice what the requirements don't include: a minimum credit score. Lenders serving this market price risk instead of refusing it, which is why applicants with damaged credit are welcome to apply and also why their APRs run higher — the full economics are on our bad credit loans page. Approval is never guaranteed for anyone, and a site promising otherwise fails the legitimacy checklist in Is Bear Loan legit?.
Prepare once, apply once
The whole preparation ritual: confirm the universal four, pull your latest pay stub, glance at your last two months of banking for surprises, and decide your amount with the calculator rather than a guess. Ten minutes of that turns the five-minute form into a one-attempt exercise — which is exactly how it should feel.
