Payday nation (lending to people against their future wages)

Citation

Rivlin, G. (2010), "Payday nation (lending to people against their future wages)", Strategic Direction, Vol. 26 No. 10. https://doi.org/10.1108/sd.2010.05626jad.010

Payday nation (lending to people against their future wages)

Article Type: Abstracts From: Strategic Direction, Volume 26, Issue 10

Rivlin G.Bloomberg Businessweek, May 2010, Start page: 56, No. of pages: 4

Describes how Allan Jones, a man who took over his father’s small debt collection agency in Tennessee and transformed it into the largest in the state, set up Check Into Cash, a company specializing in lending small amounts of money to people to tide them over until they received their wages or salaries. Explains how Jones defends himself against the charge that the high rate of interest on each loan (20%) is too steep for a short-term loan of perhaps only one week or two by arguing that banks would charge a similar sum for a bounced cheque. Notes that the payday loan is not a new business as Moneytree and QC Holdings have been operating since the 1980s, but Jones’s company was the first to pursue the cash advance as a stand-alone business with blue-sky potential. Points to an important development in this business when Billy Webster, an entrepreneur with a good deal of money and political connections, set up National Cash Advance as a competitor to Jones’s Check Into Cash. Pays particular attention to the importance placed by both Jones and Webster on the location of their outlets, most particularly the stress laid on sites close to Wal-Marts and similar supermarkets used by the working poor. Notes that this article is an excerpt from Gary Rivlin’s book (Broke, USA: How the Working Poor Became Big Business).Article type: ViewpointISSN: 0007-7136Reference: 39AP050

Keywords: Employees, Loans, Organizations, Pay, Poverty, United States of America