Know your obligations

You must report any changes to your business within 14 days including a business name change, location change, changing partner or corporate officer, change in business model, or if you are selling your business.

Submit a notice of change form – business information.
Submit a notice of change form – purchase of business.
Submit a notice of change form – corporate officers.

You must annually report aggregate loan data. Do ensure proper record-keeping to track and accumulate the required data.

Learn more about aggregate loan data reporting. 

Read Payday Loan Regulation, section 4(2)(b) and 4(3).

You must submit a copy of a standard payday loan agreement which shows all charges for every transaction along with the terms & conditions.

As of May 1, 2022, your payday loan agreements must include the following updated statement:

Payday lending is regulated by the Province of British Columbia. Payday lenders must be licensed and follow requirements under the Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act. If you have a complaint about a payday lender or would like to know more about your rights as a borrower, please contact Consumer Protection BC (the Business Practices and Consumer Protection Authority.)

Read the update to the Payday Loans Regulation (currently available through Schedule 3 in OIC 635/2021).

You may charge up to 15% of the principal of the loan. This amount must include all fees and interest, except interest charge if the borrower defaults by not repaying the loan as agreed to in the loan agreement.

You must display the loan rates you charge so borrowers can easily compare costs with other lenders.

See sample sign – small.
See sample sign – large.

You must publicly display your licence in your place of business. You must also include your licence number on any print or web materials, including:

• ads
• business cards
• print collaterals (such as brochures and flyers)
• documentations (including contracts)
• your website

If you are an online lender, your licence number must be at the top of the first page of the website.

It is important to understand that a prepaid card provided, distributed or otherwise made available by a payday lender is a cash card and therefore has a direct impact on amounts charged, required or accepted for or in relation to cash cards issued by the payday lender.

Regardless of the overall cost of borrowing limit in BC of 15%, there is an outright prohibition on a payday lender charging, requiring, or accepting any amount related to the issuance of a cash card.

The most you can charge to cash a BC Employment and Assistance cheque is either $2.00 plus 1% of the cheque amount or $10 – whichever is less. This means that you can never charge more than $10 to cash these cheques.

As of September 15, 2019, this fee cap will also apply to all Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD) issued Imprest cheques. Imprest Account cheques are issued on demand.

The fee cap does not apply to manual printed cheques. These cheques are only issued in extreme circumstances. The payment details and signatures on these cheques are filled out in handwriting.

The BC Government is changing the look of the BC Employment and Assistance Imprest (on demand) cheques. The new cheques will be rolled out in a phased implementation from June through November 2019 across the province. Fee caps will apply to both the new and old cheques.

Need more information around which cheques have a fee cap and which don’t? Wondering what these cheques look like?  

Learn more about these types of cheques.

You must not engage in practices that encourage continued debt and dependence or other unfair practices. This includes the following:

• you may not issue more than one loan to a borrower at the same time.
• you may not roll over one loan into another loan with new charges.
• you may not issue a loan for more than 50% of the borrower’s paycheque or net income to be received during a single pay period within the payday loan term.
• if a borrower is taking their third loan in a two-month period, repayment of the loan must be phase over two or three pay periods.
• you may not require or request from a borrower any payment, whether to you as the payday lender or a third-party services provider, that in total exceeds a prescribed portion of the borrower’s net pay or other net income to be received during the payday loan term. (For additional context around maximum repayments, please review section 23 of the Payday Loan Regulation.)
• you may not sell insurance to or for a borrower or requiring/requesting that a borrower insure a payday loan.
• (as of May 1, 2022) you may not require, request or accept consent from a borrower to use or disclose their personal information for any purpose other than offering, providing, or facilitating a payday loan.

Your consumer has the right to change their mind and cancel the loan by the end of 2 days – without paying any charges. Your consumer can repay a loan any time before the due date and cannot be charged extra for doing this.

We perform routine, random, follow-up, and complaint-based inspections on all our regulated businesses to ensure they comply with the law.

Find out what to expect and how to prepare for an inspection.

By law, you must not engage in deceptive or unconscionable acts.

Read the Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act, section 4.

BC consumer protection laws require that businesses have a licence for each location from where it conducts business. Conducting business from a location means several things, including:

• A location from which your physical presence, address, or telephone number in British Columbia is given in a telephone directory.
• A location from which your physical presence, address, or telephone number in British Columbia is given in any verbal or written advertisement,
• You have, in British Columbia, a resident agent, or a warehouse, office, or place of business.

We understand that you may provide remote working options to your employees.

Provided they are not conducting business in the way described above, remote workers may work from remote locations if they follow these guidelines:

1. They can only work remotely from their home-based location.
2. If the law or health directives allow, they are only to directly meet and serve clients from licensed locations and not at remote or unlicensed home-based locations.
3. While conducting business, they must only, use the contact information of the licensed location in any visual representation, correspondence, business cards, or on any printed or electronic advertisement.
4. Other than cell phone numbers or corporate IP-based phone numbers, they may not disclose their personal telephone number(s) to suppliers or clients nor reveal that they are conducting business from any unlicensed location.
5. Payments for services may be received only at the licensed office unless those payments are through electronic means via credit card or immediate EFT, and no payment information is retained or stored in the home-based location.
6. All client files, arrangement details, and associated original records of accounting or contracts handled by a telecommuter must be kept at the businesses’ licensed location. (It is permissible for telecommuters to retain copies of routine correspondence and other records at their home-based location).
7. Persons selling or otherwise arranging for the supply of goods and services to consumers with the expectation of receiving payment or benefit for so doing, are deemed to be acting as licensees and are required to comply with the provisions of these guidelines.

Except for items 6 and 7 above, these guidelines do not apply to employees of licensees performing purely accounting or other administrative functions.