Tech’s Hot New Market: The Poor

Offering loans at a 330% interest rate is "helping the poor", sounds like exploitation to me. Payday lending has been outlawed in many states due to the fact that it exploits poor people and entraps them in a cycle of high interest debt. The founder of ZenFinance acknowledges that fact in one paragraph and then touts working with a company that engages in those unethical practices in the next. The following states have outlawed payday lending:<p>Arkansas, Connecticut, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts (not strictly illegal but highly regulated), New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Vermont, West Virginia.<p>Source:wikipedia

There is something very, very, very wrong here when the sister of a tech star states: “I’d have taken out another payday loan.”

Similar to lendingclub and prosper except shorter terms and higher risk in terms of the risk analysis, not in terms of the social lending part.