The Military Lending Act (MLA) provides protections for active-duty service members and their families, including a 36% interest rate cap. This one-pager examines how payday loan apps, often marketed as Earned Wage Advance, attempt to evade these protections by claiming they are not loans.
It also highlights a growing body of court decisions rejecting those claims and recognizing these products as credit subject to federal law. As this resource explains, the stakes are high: before the MLA, high-cost lending trapped service members in cycles of debt that threatened financial stability, security clearances, and military readiness. Today, similar risks are re-emerging in digital form.