About PaydayLoan.Help

PaydayLoan.Help is an independent information site for people who already have payday loans and are trying to get out from under them. It explains what your state allows, what renewals actually cost, and the ways out, in the order most people should try them.

What this site is not

It isn’t a lender, and it isn’t a loan broker. We don’t make loans, arrange loans, or take applications for payday loans. We don’t carry payday lender advertising, and we never refer anyone to a payday lender.

It isn’t a law firm or a government agency either. Our guides explain the law; they aren’t legal advice about your situation. For that, a legal aid office or an attorney is the right call, and the guides point to where to find one.

How the research is done

State pages are built from each state’s statute and its lending regulator, read directly. Each page shows the date it was checked. Where the regulator publishes a license lookup or a complaint page, we link to it.

Federal rules are read from the regulation or statute itself, mostly through the official electronic Code of Federal Regulations and the U.S. Code as published by the Government Publishing Office, and from the agencies that enforce them: the CFPB, the FTC and the NCUA. Each guide links its primary sources inline, so you can check the wording yourself.

When something isn’t settled, we say so. For example, we haven’t found a primary source that says whether payday loans can be included in a nonprofit debt management plan, so our guides tell you to ask the counselor rather than guessing.

Example calculations on this site always show their assumptions: the amount, the fee or rate, and the term. They’re arithmetic to help you compare, not offers.

How the site may earn money

The site is free to use. If you fill in the help form, we may pass your request to a nonprofit credit counseling agency, which does not pay us, or to a lender offering loans at 36% APR or less, which may pay us if you take a loan. Payday lenders and debt settlement companies are never among them. A referral fee doesn’t change what our guides say about the law or about any option. The details are on the disclosures page.

Corrections

Laws change, and we make mistakes. If something on this site is wrong or out of date, write to hello@paydayloan.help with the page and what’s wrong. If you can, include a link to the statute, regulation or regulator page that shows it. We check it against the primary source and update the page and its date.

Who writes it