Consumers who use online payday lenders may be taken advantage of twice: first, by the lenders’ triple-digit interest rates that flout state caps, then with fees tacked on by the borrowers’ own banks.
payday loans
Today’s Young Adults Will Never Pay Off Their Credit Card Debts
When we talk about Americans barely into adulthood who are saddled with debilitating levels of debt, the conversation is almost always about student loan debt. But there’s a growing body of evidence suggesting that today’s young adults are also drowning in credit-card debt — and that many of them will take this debt to their graves.
Can a Payday Lending Start-Up Use Facebook to Create a Modern Community Bank?
Social media and big data are being used in an innovative new payday loan banking model that’s more Silicon Valley than Wall Street. Most interestingly, the operation seems to have more in common with old-fashioned hometown …
With Obama Win, Wall Street Cop Stays On the Beat
This week’s election was a cliffhanger for many people, but the stakes were higher than most for the director and staff of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The agency, which opened its doors in July 2011, was a …
Lenders Use a New Dirty Trick to Jail You For Small Debts
Debt collectors can call you, hound you and make you feel like a lowlife, but here in America, they can’t throw you in jail over your unpaid bills. Or can they? A sneaky tactic called “body attachment” is a new twist on this …
Top Consumer Complaints: Our Latest, Biggest, Weirdest Grievances
So we like to complain. What else is new? No, really — what’s new? A consumer watchdog group just released a study about the biggest and baddest complaints fielded by various investigative agencies last year. There are some …
Would You Pay $520 in Interest to Borrow $375? 12 Million Americans Did Last Year
Americans spend more than $7.4 billion on payday loans every year. That’s hardly peanuts, especially when you consider that these billions are earned $50 to $100 at a time, often off the backs of the Americans who can least …
The Subprime Generation: Stop Using Dubious Financial Services!
More young Americans – even those earning between $50,000 and $75,000 – are using payday lenders, prepaid debit cards and other questionable financial services. But there are better alternatives to those “alternatives.”
Big Banks Elbow In On Check Cashing, Payday Lending, and Other Fringe Financial Businesses
Conventional wisdom has been that low-income people are better served by mainstream financial institutions than by check cashing storefronts, payday lenders and other providers of fringe financial products. But now, that wisdom …
Uh-Oh: Banks and Credit Unions Peddling Payday Loans
A payday loan by any other name is still a raw deal for consumers. That’s the message watchdog groups have in response to the growing number of short-term, high-cost loans being offered by banks and even credit unions. Since …
A Long To-Do List Awaits the CFPB and Its New Director
Now that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has a director (albeit one whose appointment could be challenged in court), it has quite the to-do list. At the top, according to newly installed bureau head Richard Cordray, is …
CFPB’s First Move with a Director in Place: Confront ‘Nonbanks’
One day after President Obama appointed Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau over the objections of Senate Republicans, the bureau announced the launch of a new “nonbank supervision program.”
