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Comment by tomphoolery | Hacker News Reader

Earnin is a scam that disproportionately targets young poor black/latino people. It's JG Wentworth in an app. Doesn't count as a unicorn because it's not innovative at all.

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The payday lending industry operates within an intrinsically challenging ethical landscape. Their customers are generally poor, often desperate, and proportionately vulnerable. But payday lenders also don't operate within a vacuum: often the costs of high-interest-rate loans are dwarfed by comparison to the late-payment fees charged by credit cards, landlords, insurance companies, doctors offices, auto lenders, bank overdrafts, etc... As the saying goes, it's expensive to be poor. In one survey of payday loan customers performed by GWU Business School, 89% of borrowers said they were "very satisfied" or "somewhat satisfied" with their most recent payday loan. [1] No one wants to be in that situation, but for some, payday loans are the best or only option.

It's one thing to call out the kind of deliberately predatory behavior that has thrived in the payday lending industry, but it seems like Earnin is earnestly trying to provide a service that many Americans outside (and inside) the Bay Area fall back on, in the fairest and least-predatory way possible. As far as I'm concerned, that's something to be applauded, not scorned.

[1] https://reason.org/wp-content/uploads/files/payday_lending_r...

Payday lenders don't operate within a vacuum but people would still be better off if they didn't operate at all:

https://www.responsiblelending.org/sites/default/files/nodes...

Speak for yourself. A payday loan was the only thing that bailed me out from missing rent and getting evicted.

Payday loans are a lot less predatory than every major bank credit card. They at least ensure you have money to pay them back.

The study showed that people showed a strong tendency to tap other options where payday operators weren't available and ended up financially better off overall.

Wow. That app is creepy. It tracks your location so it knows when you got to work and left work. It tracks your bank account so it knows when, how often and how much you deposit. Etc.

They're undercutting loan sharks and overdraft fees by a huge percent. I wouldn't be sad to see those go.

Some creepy tracking, but curious why you think it’s a scam? I understand how payday lenders can be considered scams, but it seems like Earnin makes all the fees optional.

I haven’t used the app, just read their marketing pages, BTW so I may have missed something.

"optional fees" doesn't sound very legitimate to me

That just means there's a tip functionality.

Why is it a scam? Seems better than a payday loan if receiving paychecks daily instead of biweekly makes the difference

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