Noticia

Major banks have quickly become behind-the-scenes allies of Internet-based payday lenders that offer short-term loans with interest rates sometimes exceeding500 percent.
Enlarge This Image

Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times
Subrina Baptiste of Brooklyn says JPMorgan Chase allowed payday lenders to seizechild-support funds in her account.
With 15 states banning payday loans, a growing number of the lenders have set up online operations in more hospitable states orfar-flung locales like Belize, Malta and the West Indies to more easily evade statewide caps on interest rates.

While the banks, which include giants likeJPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, do not make the loans, they are a critical link for the lenders, enabling the lenders to withdraw paymentsautomatically from borrowers’ bank accounts, even in states where the loans are banned entirely. In some cases, the banks allow lenders to tap checking accounts evenafter the customers have begged them to stop the withdrawals.

“Without the assistance of the banks in processing and sending electronic funds, these lenderssimply couldn’t operate,” said Josh Zinner, co-director of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project, which works with community groups in NewYork.

The banking industry says it is simply serving customers who have authorized the lenders to withdraw money from their accounts. “The industry is not in aposition to monitor customer accounts to see where their payments are going,” said Virginia O’Neill, senior counsel with the American Bankers Association.