TRE Financial Services Announces Payday Loan Alternative for Clients
By J.J. CameronPayday Loan Writer
As a well-known provider of tax software and electronic filing, TRE Financial Services Inc., just announced the availability of TurboCash, a short-term lending solution. What's the purpose of this technology?
It's designed to give credit unions a competitive advantage in the short-term loan market, as well as to provide protection for their members from the escalating debt trap of retail payday loans.
TurboCash uses a proven software platform for quick loan processing and tracking, can be quickly integrated into a credit union's portfolio of member services, and supports the original charter of the Federal Credit Union Act to make credit available and promote thrift through a national system of nonprofit, cooperative credit unions.
Over the last fifteen years, online payday loans have become a $50-billion-a-year industry, with more than 10,000 payday loan outlets throughout the United States. Interest rates, however, can quickly reach an average annual percentage rate (APR) of over 600 percent, often trapping borrowers in a cycle of skyrocketing payoff amounts.
A two-year market study conducted by TRE indicates that more than twenty percent of cash loan customers are also members of a credit union. According to the National Credit Union Administration, the federal agency that charters and supervises federal credit unions, there are currently more than 80 million credit union members nationwide, with deposits in excess of $500 billion in some 9,500 federally insured credit unions.
TurboCash offers credit unions the ability to make short-term loans to their members at a fraction of the cost typically charged in the retail instant payday loan environment. The program also gives credit unions the opportunity to offer financial literacy education to their members.
"Given our long history with credit unions," said TRE CEO Andrew Priest, "it was important for us to create TurboCash as a 'win-win' product that gives credit unions a competitive advantage in the short-term loan market and offers credit union members a financially smart alternative for short term loans."
