Annual Percentage Rate: An Apples-to-Apples Consumer Tool
Payday lenders, in their battle to win legal authority to charge triple-digit interest rates, argue that stating their typical interest rate as 390 percent annually is misleading because their loans are short term. State policy-makers and even voters have specifically rejected this bogus argument but payday lenders are trying to use it again as the U.S. Congress debates how to stop widespread abuses in the payday industry. A new Center for Responsible Lending issue brief, APR Matters, lays out why that argument doesn't wash. First, the typical payday borrower is actually in debt long term