Loan contracts are written in a dialect designed by lawyers, and the dialect is learnable in five minutes. These are the terms that decide money on a payday or short-term contract, in the order you will meet them.
The Pricing Terms
Finance charge: the dollar cost of the loan, everything included, stated as an amount. The number your budget actually pays.
APR (annual percentage rate): the finance charge restated as a yearly rate. On a two-week product it looks alarming (391% on a $15-per-$100 fee) because it answers a hypothetical: what if this fee repeated for a year? Use it to compare offers, not to price your budget.
Fee per $100: how payday pricing is actually written, $15 per $100 borrowed is the classic. Multiply by size, done.
Total of payments: every payment on the schedule, summed. The truth-teller on multi-month products.
The Structural Terms
ACH (Automated Clearing House): the banking rail behind your deposit and your repayment debit. The “ACH authorization” you sign is what lets the lender pull the repayment on payday.
Deferred presentment: several states’ legal name for payday lending. Where a statute says deferred presentment, that statute is the payday law.
Single-cycle advance: a loan designed to be repaid in one payment, the payday structure.
Installment loan: fixed payments across months. Same family, longer spine, priced in APR rather than per-$100.
Revolving credit: a reusable line (cards, HELOCs). Payday is not this, whatever the commercial reads; see installment or revolving.
The Lifecycle Terms
Rollover: paying the fee to push the due date, adding a fresh charge per cycle. Banned, capped, or restricted in many states, and the engine of the debt cycle.
EPP (extended payment plan): a statutory conversion of an advance into several installments at no extra cost, available once per period in many permissive states. Ask before the due date.
Rescission / cancellation right: a short statutory window (often one business day) to cancel at no cost. Some states provide it; the contract must say so if yours does.
Default: missing the agreed debit. What follows, fees, collections, judgment risk, is mapped in can a lender sue after 7 years.
The Data Terms
Soft check: a verification inquiry that never affects your score. The request stage here is soft-check.
Hard pull: a scored credit inquiry tied to a finalized application; a few points, months of visibility.
Teletrack / Clarity: specialty bureaus that track short-term lending history. Invisible to FICO, decisive for future advances.
Underwriting: whatever the lender checks before approving; income regularity is the standard input in this market.
The Institutional Terms
CAB (Credit Access Business): the broker structure one large state uses; the CAB arranges a third-party loan and charges its own fee on top.
PAL (Payday Alternative Loan): the federal credit-union product, $200 to $2,000, 28% APR ceiling, one to twelve months; the cheapest credit on the alternatives ladder.
NAFSA / OLA: the Native American Financial Services Association and Online Lenders Alliance, industry bodies whose membership is one of the vetting checks for tribal lenders (tribal guide).
Regulator: the state agency that licenses lenders and takes complaints; linked for every state on our state pages.
Print this page next to any contract you are reading. Every number that matters on the documents traces back to one of these twenty terms, and every one of them is checked against state law in our rates and fees table.