February 15, 2018; Next City
In Louisiana, there are over 1,000 payday lenders’ storefronts, which is more than three times greater than the number of McDonald’s storefronts, wrote columnist Robert Mann in the New Orleans Times-Picayune in 2015. A typical payday loan, Mann points out, charges the customer $115 for a $100 payday check. Payment of the $15 interest is due within two weeks; if the customer cannot make the payment, another $15 is added in interest. The result: annual interest rates approaching 400 percent per year. And for the state, the costs are estimated to total more than