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>Having worked at a YC-backed alternative to payday lender (https://www.//lendup.com https://www.//lendup.com) and having spent a lot of the time in the call ce

>Having worked at a YC-backed alternative to payday lender (https://www.//lendup.com https://www.//lendup.com) and having spent a lot of the time in the call center listening to our customers, I'd suggest that a lender to folks without access to credit can have much more impact than you could possibly imagine. Being able to instantly inject $500 into the bank account of someone that needed it for a car repair or they'd lose their job when they couldn't get it elsewhere was only one of the many, many examples. Now multiply that by hundreds of thousands of customers, and the impact is not trivial by any measure. This is exactly the mindless "head-in-ass" crap the OP was talking about. You're not helping that person by lending them $500 at 400%+ APR [0]. You are trapping them into a debt cycle they will most likely never recover from until default. Subprime lending is a predatory practice which has been around forever, no matter how you flip it. It is legal under our system though, so you're more than welcome to do it and profit from people's financial ignorance. Just don't try to pretend like you're helping anybody. [0] https://www.lendup.com/rates-and-notices https://www.lendup.com/rates-and-notices

austenallred 8y ago
You clearly don't understand how LendUp works, so I'll just leave it at that.
- aphextron 8y ago
  Yes, clearly I just don't understand the complex problems they are tackling. I'm certainly not calling them out on being shady and awful like every other payday lender since forever [0]. A few takeaways from their most recent CFPB fine of $6 million : >"Misled consumers about graduating to lower-priced loans" >"Hid the true cost of credit" >"Reversed pricing without consumer knowledge" >"Understated the annual percentage rate" >"Failed to report credit information" It's honestly sad how weak the CFPB is, but at least it's something. This entire industry is a stain on humanity. [0] https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/lendup-enforcement-action/ https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/lendup-enf...
  - austenallred 8y ago
    Yes, I was there for all that. I am incredibly proud to call myself a LendUpper and I have no regrets. All of that stuff was either done on accident when the company was a small handful of people or is pretty innocuous (we got in trouble for not displaying on our advertising that the rate may differ from the imaginary icon we showed, which displayed one of the possible rates based on how much money you took out. Or getting nailed for trying to give people a discount if they promised early repayment and not giving the discount if they didn't pay in advance). Literally any company that had that regulatory weight on it would have the same number of things the CFPB could go after if they could, but no one else is trying to play by the rules and just operate out of sovereign nations.

austenallred 8y ago

You clearly don't understand how LendUp works, so I'll just leave it at that.

aphextron 8y ago
Yes, clearly I just don't understand the complex problems they are tackling. I'm certainly not calling them out on being shady and awful like every other payday lender since forever [0]. A few takeaways from their most recent CFPB fine of $6 million : >"Misled consumers about graduating to lower-priced loans" >"Hid the true cost of credit" >"Reversed pricing without consumer knowledge" >"Understated the annual percentage rate" >"Failed to report credit information" It's honestly sad how weak the CFPB is, but at least it's something. This entire industry is a stain on humanity. [0] https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/lendup-enforcement-action/ https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/lendup-enf...
- austenallred 8y ago
  Yes, I was there for all that. I am incredibly proud to call myself a LendUpper and I have no regrets. All of that stuff was either done on accident when the company was a small handful of people or is pretty innocuous (we got in trouble for not displaying on our advertising that the rate may differ from the imaginary icon we showed, which displayed one of the possible rates based on how much money you took out. Or getting nailed for trying to give people a discount if they promised early repayment and not giving the discount if they didn't pay in advance). Literally any company that had that regulatory weight on it would have the same number of things the CFPB could go after if they could, but no one else is trying to play by the rules and just operate out of sovereign nations.