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LEARN MORE ABOUT PAYDAY LENDING

Predatory lenders entice service members with offers such as check-cashing, high interest consumer credit, rent-to-own services and short-term emergency loans, primarily known as payday loans. Payday loans are highly profitable for the lender and highly addictive to the user. Payday lenders are ubiquitous in working class and lower income communities across America and are especially prevalent in military towns.

Nationwide payday loan offices grew from 300 in 1992 to nearly 12,000 in 2002 making 180 million loans with a gross dollar volume of $45 billion. Payday loans have APR’s ranging from 300% to over 1000% and literally drain the financial life from users.

According to a January 2003 FDIC report, "Typically payday customers have cash flow difficulties and few, if any, lower-cost borrowing alternatives. Payday customers tend to be frequent users of payday advances. This data indicates that the cash flow difficulties experienced by many payday customers are a long-term credit characteristic, as opposed to a short-term temporary hardship."

The May 2003 National Consumer Law Council’s report on financial scams targeting the military noted "military personnel are ripe targets for consumer predators because many are low-income (always the most-targeted groups) but have a far-longer list of economically attractive qualities than most low-income people. And military conduct codes that stress the need for orderly personal lives, including orderly finances, may inadvertently be driving service people toward the quick fixes many consumer predators offer."

Read more about the targeting of financial scams to America's military in the National Consumer Law Council’s May 2003 report: In Harm’s Way – At Home: Consumer Scams and the Direct Targeting of America’s Military and Veterans.