As the Florida Legislature convenes its 2024 legislative session, a battle looms over fintech payday loans that advocates say prey on low-income workers.
First, this is an amazing piece of investigative journalism. Thank you for digging deep and shedding light on this predatory product. What is scary is this bill will be so hard to not only defeat but to even amend with your excellent, common sense suggestions. The Florida legislature seems willing to let fintech make its investors happy on the back of the folks checking you out at Walmart or Target.
If you don't want to incur the costs associated with EWAs, why use them? There has to be some other form of payment low income workers can get. Possibly a high interest, as if they are not all high, credit card that is paid off each month. That may be better.
Limiting the fees and setting the "tipping amount", which I find ludicrous anyway, to zero without penalty, would be great, as long as they can still get interest on the loan. They may be forced to start to do more collections, but only time would really tell on that if the fees are capped.
I'm not sure if I like the fact that there are borrowers in a class action that sued because EWAs caused overdrafts. That same thing can happen if you are not using EWAs but have companies go directly to your checking account. I do like work-place based EWAs better. However, I don't believe it should be the companies that pay the fees. If I don't use the EWA, why should I "pay for" others to use it? That doesn't seem fair to the person that doesn't use it. Keep in mind, corporations will make how ever much money they want to make. If you charge them more, they will charge the consumers more which in turn will cause the people that require the EWAs to require them more and those that don't currently use EWAs to possibly need to use them. It's called inflation. Every time costs go up for a company, costs go up for consumers are well.
They probably want a cut of the what-should-be-usurious, sky high interest rates that poor people are scammed out of. Because, you know, it’s Florida...
First, this is an amazing piece of investigative journalism. Thank you for digging deep and shedding light on this predatory product. What is scary is this bill will be so hard to not only defeat but to even amend with your excellent, common sense suggestions. The Florida legislature seems willing to let fintech make its investors happy on the back of the folks checking you out at Walmart or Target.
If you don't want to incur the costs associated with EWAs, why use them? There has to be some other form of payment low income workers can get. Possibly a high interest, as if they are not all high, credit card that is paid off each month. That may be better.
Limiting the fees and setting the "tipping amount", which I find ludicrous anyway, to zero without penalty, would be great, as long as they can still get interest on the loan. They may be forced to start to do more collections, but only time would really tell on that if the fees are capped.
I'm not sure if I like the fact that there are borrowers in a class action that sued because EWAs caused overdrafts. That same thing can happen if you are not using EWAs but have companies go directly to your checking account. I do like work-place based EWAs better. However, I don't believe it should be the companies that pay the fees. If I don't use the EWA, why should I "pay for" others to use it? That doesn't seem fair to the person that doesn't use it. Keep in mind, corporations will make how ever much money they want to make. If you charge them more, they will charge the consumers more which in turn will cause the people that require the EWAs to require them more and those that don't currently use EWAs to possibly need to use them. It's called inflation. Every time costs go up for a company, costs go up for consumers are well.
So the Republican plan is to drive the poorest into poverty. What's the next step in their plan? People are so poor they sell themselves into slavery?
The Republicans must be stopped!
Thank you Mr Garcia for your excellent investigative reporting!
They probably want a cut of the what-should-be-usurious, sky high interest rates that poor people are scammed out of. Because, you know, it’s Florida...