Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

When Walmart started talking about its successes with its Pay With Cash Online program, consumers showed quite an interest in buying products online by making a promise to pay within 48 hours. And it didn’t take long for a company—completely unaffiliated with Walmart, as far as we can tell—to swoop in and offer to facilitate high-interest loans so underbanked shoppers can deliver the cash.

On Tuesday (June 19), Loans.net put out a statement about Walmart’s Pay With Cash program and pitched itself as a loan finder. (Thanks, guys, but Walmart can suck blood from shoppers who aren’t good at math all on its own.) There’s an irony here. Many consumers avoid credit cards because they don’t want to be on the hook for large interest payments if they can’t pay for everything right away. To address this, Walmart offers people a way to shop online for cash. Then a loan-finder vulture swoops in to charge those cash customers high interest. Guess there’s a reason you don’t hear about banker humanitarians very often.