If I had a credit card with a limit large enough for the need, I wouldn't be even thinking about payday loans in the first place. This hypothetical doesn't hap

If I had a credit card with a limit large enough for the need, I wouldn't be even thinking about payday loans in the first place. This hypothetical doesn't happen in the real world; there's no time where even the most awful subprime credit card (even at cash advance rates!) will be cheaper than a payday loan. Its usefulness as a metric for a loan intended to be held for a couple of weeks to a month is very limited. Maybe when shopping across short-term lenders, but at that point, it's more intuitive to think in terms of how much the fee is in absolute terms.