Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Can Banks Disrupt the Payday Lending Business?
Can Banks Disrupt the Payday Lending Business?
Nov 30, 2025 12:44 AM

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
Why American slavery wasn’t capitalist
In his new book, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, Edward E. Baptist “offers a radical new interpretation of American history,” through which slavery laid the foundation for and “drove the evolution and modernization of the United States.” In a review of the book for the Wall Street Journal, Fergus M. Bordewich concurs with this central point, noting that “Mississippi…does not have to look like Manchester, England, or Lowell, Mass., to make it...
Is Money Just a Necessary Evil?
If money didn’t exist, would God have ordained that we invent it? Theologian Wayne Grudem says he would since money is simply a tool for our use that makes voluntary exchanges possible: Money makes voluntary exchanges more fair, less wasteful, and far more extensive. We need money in the world in order for us to be good stewards of the earth and to glorify God through using it wisely. If money were evil in itself, then God would not have...
Why Are So Many Americans Still on Food Stamps?
When the economy takes a downturn and unemployment rises, more people rely on the social safety net and programs like the recently renamed food stamp program called SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). As the economy improves and employment increases, people need to rely less on government provided support. At least that’s what used to happen. But something has changed. From 1969 until 2003, SNAP has been very responsive to changes in the unemployment rate. But from 2003 to 2007, the...
Rev. Sirico on the Vatican Synod
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Rev. Robert A. Sirico clears away the media hype surrounding the Vatican Synod on the Family and offers an analysis of its early work. He observes that nothing about the synod “challenges the dogma of the church related to the indissolubility of sacramental marriage, the use of artificial contraception, cohabitation and homosexual acts. What it did was soften the tone of these teachings.” But things got interesting. An early report led critics to say that...
Movies That Define America
Don’t you love lists? Intercollegiate Press does too, and they’ve put together “12 Movies That Defined America.” Feel free to argue, debate, add on, cross off as you wish. Here are just a couple of Intercollegiate Press’ choices: The Birth of a Nation – 1915, silent. The first blockbuster, D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation was both celebrated as a great artistic achievement and denounced as racist for its vicious depiction of African Americans and homage to the KKK....
Ladies: Give Us Your Most Productive Years, We’ll Hold Your Eggs For You
This story has so many things wrong with it, I hardly know where to start. Apple and Facebook have both announced that will now offer egg-freezing – for non-medical purposes – for their employees (which runs at least $10,000, plus a $500 to $800 annual storage fee.) For panies, it means two things. One, there is a demand from their employees for such an offer. Second, panies themselves see some benefit to this. What it sounds like is this: “It’s...
In Memoriam: Leonard Liggio (1933-2014)
LiggioThe Acton Institute, and the free market movement, lost a great friend yesterday with the death of Leonard Liggio, the “Johnny Appleseed of Classical Liberalism.” Writing for Forbes, Acton board member Alejandro Chafuen described Liggio’s “deep and encyclopedic historical knowledge” and how he fruitfully brought that to bear on many projects and institutions. “His understanding of the evolution of legal institutions helped me and many others put our economic and policy arguments into a better perspective,” Chafuen wrote. He remembered...
How Rural Roads Can Change the World
When es to reducing global poverty, the simplest solutions can often have an amazing impact. A prime example is the creation of travelable roads. Kenneth M. Quinn, a former U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia, explains how creating a rural road in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam not only improved the economy but also reduced child mortality and increased regional security: Everywhere the new road went, farmers began using the new rice with amazing, almost overnight, results. Farmers could now harvest two...
Why Not Just Hand Over the Sermons?
After hearing the news that the city of Houston had ordered several pastors to submit their sermons for legal review, many people had the same reaction as Brian Lee: “My response? So what? Sermons are public proclamation, aren’t they?” Sermons are indeed proclamations intended for the public, and most pastors would be eager for anyone — including public officials — to hear them. So what is the reason for the current objection? Mollie Hemingway explains that the true “governing authorities”...
Purple Penguins, Womyn’s Rights, And Semantic Silliness
In 1994, a clever man named James Finn Garner published Politically Correct Bedtime Stories. Garner did fabulous send-ups of familiar stories, with a twist: all of them were carefully constructed so as to offend NO ONE: There once was a young person named Red Riding Hood who lived with her mother on the edge of a large wood. One day her mother asked her to take a basket of fresh fruit and mineral water to her grandmother’s house—not because this...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved