When did payday lending start?
Matthew Harrington
Updated on January 30, 2026
In the early 1990s, check cashers began offering payday loans in states that were unregulated or had loose regulations.
Where do payday loans come from?
Payday loans are short-term cash loans based on the borrower’s personal check held for future deposit or on electronic access to the borrower’s bank account. Borrowers write a personal check for the amount borrowed plus the finance charge and receive cash.
When did payday lending start springing up?
Payday loans are marketed as a convenient, short-term solution when a borrower needs cash in a hurry. Storefront payday loan businesses began to spring up across the country in the 1980s and quickly became commonplace. In 2017, there were 14,348 payday loan storefronts3 in the United States.
Why is it called a payday loan?
The term “payday” in payday loan refers to when a borrower writes a postdated check to the lender for the payday salary, but receives part of that payday sum in immediate cash from the lender. Payday loans have been linked to higher default rates.
Are payday lenders banks?
A payday loan is a high-cost, short-term loan for a small amount — typically $500 or less — that’s meant to be repaid with the borrower’s next paycheck. Payday loans require only an income and bank account and are often made to people who have bad or nonexistent credit.
What are the disadvantages of a payday loan?
Con 2: Payday loans are considered predatory
- The lender doesn’t check whether you’ll be able to repay the loan. If you can’t repay the loan, you could be forced to roll the loan over repeatedly, accumulating new fees each time.
- The loan doesn’t help you build credit.
When did payday loans start in the United States?
Check Into Cash store. As early as the 1930s check cashers cashed post-dated checks for a daily fee until the check was negotiated at a later date. In the early 1990s, check cashers began offering payday loans in states that were unregulated or had loose regulations.
What do you need to know about a payday loan?
The loan process. The basic loan process involves a lender providing a short-term unsecured loan to be repaid at the borrower’s next payday. Typically, some verification of employment or income is involved (via pay stubs and bank statements), although according to one source, some payday lenders do not verify income or run credit checks.
Are there still payday loans in the UK?
Even with the UK economy statistically in recovery, you can barely open a newspaper or watch a news bulletin without seeing a story about payday loans. It’s a term that has entered our post-2008 lexicon, alongside ‘triple-dip’, ‘food banks’ and ‘quantitative easing’.
When was the first loan in history made?
The history of lending has shown us that the huge progress of civilization would not be where it is today without loans acting as the igniting fuel. When were loans invented? The very earliest example of lending dates back to over 4,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, 2,000 BCE, where the very first payday loans were used by farmers.