Payday loan centers are opening in the Spokane area faster than you can say, Show me the money.


At least 12 payday loan stores have set up shop here within the last yearnine of which have opened since Novemberand another eight such centers are expected to open before year-end.


Just as fast, Spokane area residents are embracing the concept, says Rich Stacy, a Tacoma-based regional manager for Advance Til Payday stores in Washington state.


Weve excelled in Spokane, says Stacy, whose company has opened three stores here since December. The stores are doing well, even compared to the West Side stores.


Payday loan centers grant loans to customers under two conditions: They have a job, and they have a bank account. After verifying those two facts, the stores lend money, with maximum amounts ranging from $300 to $500, to customers regardless of their credit history.


In exchange for the cash, the payday loan center receives a check for the amount of the loanplus an added percentage. In Washington, the maximum percentage allowed by law is 15 percent, and representatives from each of the payday loan stores interviewed say their stores charge the maximum amount.


On the customers next scheduled payday, the payday loan center cashes the check.


For example, an approved customer who wants to borrow $500 from a payday loan center would write a check payable to the store for $575, which the store would deposit on the borrowers next payday. Thus, the borrower is paying $75 for a $500 advance.


While payday loan executives boost the process as a convenient lending alternative, the increased popularity of the payday-advance lending process concerns some credit counselors, who say they are wary of any method of spending money before its earned.


They wouldnt be growing so rapidly if there wasnt a demand, says Cecil Ellsworth, director of education at Consumer Credit Counseling Services of the Inland Northwest. That worries methat theres such a demand for that kind of service.


Ellsworth says the proliferation of payday loan centers, unfortunately, could lead to more clients for his nonprofit agency and other debt managers.


Amortized over an entire year, the annual percentage charged for a payday-advance loan would be astronomical. However, most payday loan centers contend that because the loan is paid off within days, annual percentage rates dont apply.


Contrary to the assumption that payday loan centers cater mostly to low-income people, industry representatives characterize their customers as middle-class, employed people who need money for an emergency or some other short-term use.


Sam Choate, executive vice president at Cleveland, Tenn.-based Check Into Cashs corporate offices, says an in-house survey found that the average customer in Washington is 35 years old and makes just over $30,000 a year. It also found that the average customer has been at his or her current job for four years and has lived at the same address for just over three years.


Choate says emergency car repair is a good example of a reason why someone would use his companys lending services.


Trevor Ahlberg, chief executive officer for Dallas-based The Cash Store Ltd., offered similar demographics for his stores customers.


It reflects middle America, Ahlberg says. We dont target the top 15 percent, and we dont target the bottom 15 percent. We target the 70 percent in the middle.


Other types of businesses here, such as pawnshops and check-cashing operations, have begun offering payday loans, but all of the new stores arriving in the Spokane market concentrate exclusively on that line of business.


In the last year, at least four national companies have opened stores here that specialize in payday loans:


The Cash Store Ltd., a Dallas-based corporation, has opened three stores in the last month and plans to open two more before March 1, Ahlberg says.


The Cash Store locations that have opened include shops at 9301 N. Division on Spokanes North Side, 504 E. Sprague near downtown, and 1509 N. Pines in the Spokane Valley. Additional store openings in the Valley, at 9120 E. Sprague, and on the South Hill, at 2818 E. 29th, are imminent, Ahlberg says.


WCS Loans Inc., a Tacoma-based company that does business as Advance Til Payday, has opened three stores here and could open up to five more before the end of the year, Stacy says.


The company opened its first store here, a 600-square-foot shop at 4507 N. Nevada, at the end of December. Stacy says the business has opened two more shops since then, one on East Sprague in the Spokane Valley and another off U.S. 2, and has leased space for a fourth location in East Spokane, at 520 S. Thor.


While the company hasnt signed any other leases, Stacy says it could open as many as four additional stores here in the next six months.


Advance America opened its first store here two months ago in a 1,700-square-foot strip mall space at 6009 N. Division, says Denise Harfield, a Clark Pacific Real Estate Co. agent whos representing the Spartanburg, S.C.-based company. In January, it opened a Spokane Valley store in an old Dairy Queen building at the corner of Sprague and Bowdish, and it has leased a third Spokane location at the corner of Hamilton and Mission near Gonzaga University, where it plans to open by April. Beyond that, the company doesnt have any immediate plans for the Spokane market, Harfield says.


Check Into Cash Inc., a Cleveland, Tenn.-based payday loan company, has opened stores at 1014 N. Pines, 920 N. Division, and 555 E. Francis.


Ed Ryan, Check Into Cashs vice president of new development, says the company has no immediate plans to open more stores in the Spokane area.


The spread of the stores here is representative of a national trend, payday loan center executives say.


Check Into Cash, for example, has opened 385 stores in 16 states, with an average of 15 new payday loan centers opening each month. In The Cash Stores two-year history, it has opened 60 stores in four states. Opening several locations in one city, as it currently is doing here, is standard procedure, Ahlberg says.


Its a lucrative industry, Stacy says. Its been around 10 years, but in the last year to two years, its really taken off and been accepted.


All four companies that are opening stores here either have opened or plan to put payday loan centers in other Eastern and Central Washington cities, such as Wenatchee, Moses Lake, Kennewick, and Walla Walla.


For the local retail real estate community, the payday loan centers have generated a fair amount of development and leasing business in recent months. Pinnacle Realty Inc. commercial real estate agent Bill Sleeth says his company has been involved in seven deals concerning payday loan centers in the past four months.


The payday loan centers generally lease between 600 and 2,500 square feet of space for an outlet, and the quality of the space runs the gamut, Sleeth says.


They have certainly absorbed a lot of vacant space, Sleeth says. Its not in the same way as when we fill a Spokane Valley Mall yet theyve filled a great deal of small space.