While there's a degree of #latestagecapitalism to this, I do think it's actually an instance of capitalism's less predatory manifestations.

The way it works is that an employer can sign up with this company, PayActiv. Employees can then get up to half of how much they've earned for a pay period prior to payday. So if someone earns $1,000 every two weeks, they could get a $250 advance after the first week. The fee is only $5, which is nothing compared to what people are paying payday lenders. This seems like a good solution overall.

As an aside, there's a special hatred in my heart for payday lenders. When I was in law school, I interned for our state Attorney General's office, specifically in the consumer protection section. (It was technically consumer protection and antitrust, but there was one antitrust lawyer who was part time.) Payday lenders were a big focus of ours at that time, especially with a Republican AG and legislature. Aside to the aside: I remember going with my boss to a General Assembly session, and it was more than a little distressing to hear payday lenders' talking points coming from our alleged representatives.

Anyway, I very much enjoyed suing those son of bitches. Usually we could get them on how they worded their contracts. See, even Virginia has usury laws. (Note that this is how things were back in 2007 when I was doing things, and the law may well have changed.) Ostensibly, no one can charge more than 33% interest on a loan. But there's an exception, doubtless of shady provenance, for lines of credit. These are similar to a credit card: you can pull out up to a certain amount, but it's not specific and you don't get it up front. Then you pay interest on what you've currently got out, and can pay it back basically whenever (there may be a minimum monthly payment or something).

But with these, the sky's the limit. We'd routinely see agreements these companies were using that would charge 350% interest or more. Usually, though, they'd write them improperly. The big one was giving a grace period: the law (again, at least at this time) was that you had to allow a certain period where if the person paid you back, you wouldn't get charged anything. They usually didn't do this. This made the agreement a regular loan, not a line of credit, and so it then became illegal under the usury statute. We'd then sue them to recover all the interest they'd improperly collected, and if we were lucky they'd go out of business.

Anyway, those companies were always shady as fuck, and were basically designed for the sole purpose of fleecing poor people. Fuck them to hell.