CHICAGO — Credit union efforts to provide alternative products to payday loans again received conditional praise this week when an Oct. 15 story on National Public Radio's Morning Edition program highlighted one CU's effort.
The piece described the efforts of the $7.1 million North Side Community Federal Credit Union to help its members get out of the payday loan trap but included the comments of a researcher with the Center for Responsible Lending, an affiliate of the $291 million Self-Help Credit Union, headquartered in Durham, North Carolina.
"There are some credit union products out there where they lowered the interest rate," the piece quoted Leslie Parish, a researcher for the Center as saying. "They still make the loan due in two short weeks, which causes people to continually take out loans just like they did with the payday lender."
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Recently several representatives of organizations which combat payday lending have been quoted as saying that credit union payday alternatives are better than the loan themselves but still encourage too much of a short term loan mentality.
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