Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Can Banks Disrupt the Payday Lending Business?
Can Banks Disrupt the Payday Lending Business?
Jan 28, 2026 11:11 PM

Since its inception in the 1990s, the payday lending industry has grown at an astonishing pace. Currently, there are about 22,000 payday lending locations — more than two for every Starbucks — that originate an estimated $27 billion in annual loan volume.

But payday lenders may soon face some petition. A few of the largest consumer banks in America are considering goingto market with new small-dollar installment loan products, reports the American Banker.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the U.S. government’s consumer protection agency, isconsidering proposing rulesthat would end payday debt traps by requiring lenders to take steps to make sure consumers can repay their loans. One of the proposals is to exempt lenders from certain requirements if the amount the consumer is required to pay each month is no more than 5 percent of the consumer’s gross monthly e. According to American Banker:

[T]he banks said if the 5% exemption is part of the proposal, they believe they can offer a product that would satisfy regulators. A mockup of what the product could look like would be a $500 five-month loan for a borrower with an annual e of $30,000 and monthly payments of $125 (or 5% of the borrower’s $2,500 average monthly e). After assuming a 6% loss rate (which would parable to similar installment loans currently on the market), automation expenses and servicing fees, a bank could net roughly $70 while the borrower would be on the hook for $125. The average cost of a similar payday loan product would be closer to $750.

“The 5% payment option is the only part of the CFPB proposal that could save millions of borrowers billions of dollars,” said Nick Bourke, director of the small-dollar loans project at the Pew Charitable Trusts. “It would enhance underwriting while pliance costs by capping the monthly payment at 5% of the borrower’s e with a term up to six months.”

The banks wouldn’t make much money off of these types of loans, but as the article notes, they would increase goodwill with munities and potentially entice under-banked consumers to use other banking services and products.

The CFPB is set to announce the beginning of the payday lending rulemaking process next Thursday, June 2nd at a field hearing in Kansas City.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
School choice is in jeopardy in a case before the Supreme Court
While the case before the Court concerns rural Maine, the implications for parents across the nation are clear: state funds should continue to be available to parents for religious schools and is no violation of the Establishment Clause. Read More… The difference between a “Christian organization” and an “organization that does Christian things” might seem like a distinction without a difference. But it is precisely this difference that is at the heart of the question presented to the U.S. Supreme...
Czechs vote communists out of parliament
While the latest election marks a decisive symbolic victory munism and progressivism, it’s but one development in a larger realignment marked by a mix of populism and centrism. Read More… Since 1925, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia has had a seat at the table in Czech parliaments. While momentarily sidelined by the Nazi occupation during World War II, the party managed to centralize power rather quickly thereafter, working with Moscow to crush dissent and impose totalitarian control from 1948 until...
The current labor crisis started before the pandemic and has much to teach us
Young people are constantly presented with vocational blueprints and cookie-cutter college tracks that ignore plexity of the human person and the diversity of human needs. Read More… The United States is facing a labor shortage of epic proportions. With over 10 million jobs currently available and almost 9 million available workers waiting on the sidelines, “the U.S. now has more job openings than any time in history,” according to NBC News. The Biden administration surely bears some of the blame,...
Privilege and price controls make USPS too big to fail
A cut in size and a little taxation could just save the USPS from itself. Read More… The United States Postal Service (USPS) e under criticism for extending first-class delivery times as part of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s 10-year plan to revitalize the agency. According to Tyler Powell and David Wessel at Brookings, “The USPS has operated at a loss since 2007.” In response to the news of delayed service, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.,tweeted, “Louis DeJoy is wrong. We don’t...
Jimmy Lai coming up on one year in prison as new court date is set in pro-democracy activist’s case
By the time Lai appears in court on Dec. 28 to face treason charges, he will have spent almost a year in prison, during which time his panies have been folded and six of his senior-ranking colleagues have all been arrested. Read More… Jimmy Lai, a 73-year-old Hong Kong media mogul, outspoken critic of China, pro-democracy activist, and recipient of the Acton Institute’s 2020 Faith and Freedom Award, will approach a year behind bars as his national security case is...
University of Hong Kong demands Tiananmen Square Massacre memorial statue be forcibly removed from campus grounds
The Pillar of Shame has stood as a memorial to the lives lost during the Tiananmen Square Massacre for 24 years. Its removal is another sign that the Hong Kong government will not tolerate dissent even in the form of memory. Read More… The University of Hong Kong requested that members of a prominent but now-disbanded social rights group remove from campus grounds its famous statue, the Pillar of Shame, which pays tribute to victims in Beijing’s violent crackdown during...
Civil rights leader pleads not guilty to charges related to Tiananmen Square Massacre vigil
Even the memory of the massacre has e a threat to Hong Kong and Chinese authorities, as they crack down on mass attendance at public vigils. Read More… The former vice chair of a now-disbanded civil rights group,​​ the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, which also organizes the annual Tiananmen Square vigil, pleaded not guilty to charges of inciting others to take part in this year’s banned vigil. Chow Hang-tung, representing herself, appeared in...
Hold internet companies responsible for content on their platforms, not just the government
The alternative to holding panies like Facebook liable for third-party content on their sites is a regulatory machine that poses a far greater threat to free speech than self-monitoring. Read More… Frances Haugen’s recent whistleblower testimony regarding Facebook will only stoke the fires of the battle heating up in courts and legislatures over provisions originally addressed in Rule 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Limits placed by private panies on individuals and organizations have raised an alarm on both ends...
Rising to the challenges of ‘so-so automation’
If we assume a chaos narrative, humans have little hope peting with our petitors. But through the lens of God’s creative design, humans e protagonists in a bigger, more mysterious story of economic abundance. Read More… Fears about job loss and human obsolescence continue to consume the cultural pounded by ongoing strides in artificial intelligence and machine learning. The job-killing robots are almost at the door, we are told, mere moments away from replacing the last traces of human inefficiency...
We need a ‘Forbes 400 Poorest Americans’ list
Would highlighting the least among us elicit only predictable ideological reactions, or serve to encourage a new kind of entrepreneurial initiative? Read More… In the 1936 film My Man Godfrey, an oddly well-spoken “forgotten man” whose temporary lodgings are a city dump, finds himself the object of a game played by a pair of rich sisters, one of whom takes a fancy to him. Seeing in Godfrey a project, or “protégé,” the more likable sister decides to give him a...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved