A recent Washington Examiner op-ed calls AFSA “a strident voice opposing greater consumer choice in debt relief” and suggests our motives are suspect because our members are lenders. We’ll take the compliment on “strident.” The rest deserves a response. Start with what the op-ed gets right, almost by accident: responsible debt relief can be an essential tool […]

August 20, 2026 at 2:00 p.m. ET Consumer lenders closely monitor the cost of accepting payments, often focusing on transaction fees and processor invoices. But what if those costs represent only a small fraction of what it actually takes to get paid? New research from PayNearMe introducing the Payment Experience Gap found that transaction fees […]

Consumer confidence slid again in July. The Conference Board reported Tuesday that its Consumer Confidence Index fell to 90.8 — below the 92.3 economists expected — as Americans’ assessment of current business and labor market conditions declined for the third month in a row. The reading captured a darker mood than the University of Michigan’s sentiment survey […]