I pulled up Minn. Stat. § 47.60 on the Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes website while writing this, and the definition of “consumer small loan lender” on the screen isn’t the definition in force.
The displayed text says a consumer small loan lender is a financial institution or “a business entity registered with the commissioner and engaged in the business of making consumer small loans.” The 2026 Legislature changed that sentence to read “making or arranging,” and added a definition of what arranging means. The amendment took effect August 1, 2026. The page still shows the old sentence, sitting under a banner that says only that the section “has been affected by law enacted during the 2026 Regular Session.”
That kind of gap between the screen and the law is exactly what burns people. So everything below is stated as of August 10, 2026, with the currency chain shown.
What is a “consumer small loan,” and is that the same thing as a payday loan?
It’s one of Minnesota’s two payday statutes, and it’s the smaller one. Section 47.60 governs a specific, narrow product. Subdivision 1, paragraph (a) defines it:
“A consumer small loan” is a loan transaction in which cash is advanced to a borrower for the borrower’s own personal, family, or household purpose. A consumer small loan is a short-term, unsecured loan to be repaid in a single installment. The cash advance of a consumer small loan is equal to or less than $350. A consumer small loan includes an indebtedness evidenced by but not limited to a promissory note or agreement to defer the presentation of a personal check for a fee.
If a product misses any one of those limits (cash advanced for personal, family, or household purposes; unsecured; repayable in a single installment; $350 or less), it isn’t a consumer small loan, and § 47.60 doesn’t govern it.
The companion statute, Minn. Stat. § 47.601, covers what it calls a “consumer short-term loan” in subdivision 1, paragraph (e): a loan with a principal amount or credit-limit advance “of $1,300 or less” that “requires a minimum payment within 60 days of loan origination or credit advance of more than 25 percent of the principal balance or credit advance.” That’s the bigger category, and which statute applies to a given loan turns on the loan documents. For the ordinary written note between private parties, and for business borrowing, the law is different again: the general usury provisions covered in Minnesota’s 8% usury cap and why almost nobody hits it.
Is the 2026 amendment actually in force on August 10, 2026?
Yes. A banner alone doesn’t answer that, so I traced the chain one link at a time.
The banner on § 47.60 says: “47.60 subd. 1 has been amended by Chapter 124, Article 1, Section 5.” Laws 2026, chapter 124, is House File 4188, an act relating to commerce. Article 1, section 5 amends subdivision 1, paragraph (b), so that a consumer small loan lender includes a business entity “engaged in the business of making or arranging consumer small loans,” and adds this sentence:
“For purposes of this paragraph, arranging a consumer small loan includes but is not limited to any substantial involvement to facilitate, market, generate leads for, underwrite, or collect a consumer small loan.”
Section 5 has no effective-date clause. When an act is silent, Minn. Stat. § 645.02 fills in the default: “Each act, except one making appropriations, enacted finally at any session of the legislature takes effect on August 1 next following its final enactment, unless a different date is specified in the act.” The same section gives an appropriation act, or “an act having appropriation items,” a July 1 default instead. “Final enactment” is defined at Minn. Stat. § 645.01, subd. 2. For a bill the governor signs, it “means the date and time of day the governor signed the bill.”
Chapter 124 was presented to the governor on May 20, 2026, and signed on May 27, 2026. The August 1 next following that date is August 1, 2026; the July 1 branch would be July 1, 2026. Chapter 124 is titled as an act relating to commerce, so the August 1 default is the one that applies. But you don’t even have to settle that, because both possible dates come before today. The amendment is in force, and the Revisor’s codified display of subdivision 1 hasn’t caught up. Where the display and the session law disagree, the session law is the enacted law.
Notice what the amendment didn’t do. It touched subdivision 1 only. The rate, term, and fee provisions in subdivision 2 weren’t amended in 2026, and every number below is the figure that was already there.
What may a consumer small loan cost?
An annual percentage rate of up to 50 percent, and not one cent of anything else. Subdivision 2, paragraph (a):
“In connection with a consumer small loan, a consumer small loan lender may charge an annual percentage rate of up to 50 percent. No other charges or payments are permitted or may be received by the lender in connection with a consumer small loan.”
The second sentence does the heavy lifting, and the definition of the rate backs it up. Subdivision 1, paragraph (c) defines “annual percentage rate” as a measure of the cost of credit expressed as a yearly rate, then adds: “Annual percentage rate includes all interest, finance charges, and fees.” Not a rate plus an origination fee plus a verification fee. Everything the borrower pays sits inside the 50 percent.
Subdivision 2 adds six more paragraphs of structure. The term “shall be for no more than 30 calendar days” (paragraph (b)). After maturity, “the contract rate must not exceed 2.75 percent per month of the remaining loan proceeds after the maturity date calculated at a rate of 1/30 of the monthly rate in the contract for each calendar day the balance is outstanding” (paragraph (c)). No insurance or other charges except as the section authorizes (paragraph (d)). On a loan made in exchange for a personal check, a return check charge may be imposed as authorized by Minn. Stat. § 604.113, subd. 2, paragraph (a), which caps a dishonored-check service charge at $30 and requires that notice of it have been conspicuously displayed. But that section’s civil penalty provisions “may not be demanded or assessed against the borrower” (paragraph (e)).
Paragraph (f) is the anti-rollover rule, and it’s written three ways at once. A loan under the section “must not be repaid by the proceeds of another loan made under this section by the same lender or related interest.” Proceeds of one such loan may not be applied to another from the same lender or related interest. And no loan may be split or divided, nor may a single borrower have more than one outstanding “with the result of collecting a higher charge than permitted by this section or in an aggregate amount of principal exceed at any one time the maximum of $350.”
Paragraph (g) points outward: “A loan made under this section with an annual percentage rate that exceeds 36 percent must comply with section 47.603.” That’s the ability-to-repay statute. By its subdivision 2 it “applies to all payday loans with an annual percentage rate that exceeds 36 percent,” and it forbids making such a loan unless the lender “first determines, based on an analysis that complies with subdivision 5, that the borrower has the ability to make the payday loan payment when the payday loan payment comes due at the end of the loan period.”
What happens if a lender charges more than the statute allows?
Subdivision 6 is one sentence long, and it sends you somewhere else for the answer: “A person who violates or participates in the violation of any of the provisions of this section is liable in the same manner as in section 47.601, subdivision 6.”
Section 47.601, subdivision 6, paragraph (a) makes a violator liable to the borrower for five items: all money collected or received in connection with the loan; actual, incidental, and consequential damages; statutory damages of up to $1,000 per violation; costs, disbursements, and reasonable attorney fees; and injunctive relief. It opens with an exception for a “bona fide error” as set forth under 15 U.S.C. § 1640(c).
Paragraph (b) goes further. “In addition to the remedies provided in paragraph (a), a loan is void, and the borrower is not obligated to pay any amounts owing if the loan is made” by an unlicensed consumer short-term lender, in violation of subdivision 2 or 3 of § 47.601, or “in which interest, fees, charges, or loan amounts exceed the interest, fees, charges, or loan amounts allowable under section 47.60, subdivision 2.”
That last clause measures the voiding trigger against § 47.60’s own limits. What § 47.60, subd. 6 doesn’t do is spell out, item by item, how each remedy in § 47.601, subd. 6 maps onto a § 47.60 violation. It says only “in the same manner.” On that mechanics question the statute is silent, and silence isn’t an answer.
Separately, subdivision 5 lets a borrower or former borrower who has reason to believe the section has been violated file a written complaint with the commissioner setting out the details. On receipt, the commissioner “may inspect the pertinent books, records, letters, and contracts of the lender and borrower involved.” That’s an administrative complaint, not a lawsuit, and the statute prescribes no form and no deadline for it.
If the loan has already been sold or sent out for collection, the collector’s own conduct falls under a different chapter (see Minnesota’s debt collection statute), and the general deception remedies are covered in Minnesota’s consumer protection statutes. After judgment, the price of the same unpaid dollar changes again: Minnesota’s judgment interest rates.
Who has to file with the commissioner, and what must be posted on the wall?
Any business entity other than a financial institution as defined by § 47.59 has to file with the commissioner before making consumer small loans to Minnesota residents. Subdivision 3 requires a prescribed form, a fee of $250 for each place of business, and two items: “evidence that the filer has available for the operation of the business at the location specified, liquid assets of at least $50,000,” and “a biographical statement on the principal person responsible for the operation and management of the business to be certified.” It closes by saying that “business entity” includes one with no physical location in Minnesota that lends over the internet.
Subdivision 4 puts five obligations on a filer, and the fifth is the one you can see. A lender must display, in each licensed place of business, a statement of charges “in a notice, on plastic or other durable material measuring at least 12 inches by 18 inches, headed ‘CONSUMER NOTICE REQUIRED BY THE STATE OF MINNESOTA.’” Right above it, the notice has to carry this sentence, or a substantially similar one the commissioner approves:
“These loan charges are higher than otherwise permitted under Minnesota law. Minnesota law permits these higher charges only because short-term small loans might otherwise not be available to consumers. If you have another source of a loan, you may be able to benefit from a lower interest rate and other loan charges.”
The other four are books and records adequate for the commissioner to determine compliance; an annual report on or before March 15 covering the preceding calendar year; a posted, commissioner-approved schedule of charges and the method of computing them, plus a copy of the loan contract on request; and marking every obligation signed by the borrower “Paid” or “Canceled” indelibly within 20 days after repayment.
What does the anti-evasion subdivision reach?
Subdivision 8 opens: “A person must not engage in any device, subterfuge, or pretense to evade the requirements of this section, including but not limited to” three named structures: loans disguised as a personal property sale and leaseback, loan proceeds disguised as a cash rebate for a pretextual installment sale, and making or arranging an over-limit loan “through any method, including mail, telephone, Internet, or any electronic means, regardless of whether a person has a physical location in Minnesota.”
Paragraph (b) makes a person a consumer small loan lender “notwithstanding the fact that a person purports to act as an agent or service provider,” on either of two showings: that the person directly or indirectly holds the predominant economic interest, risk, or reward in the loan or lending business; or that the person both markets, solicits, brokers, arranges, or facilitates the loan and holds, or holds the right or first right of refusal to acquire, the loans or receivables.
Paragraph (c) adds a totality-of-the-circumstances test with four listed circumstances weighing in favor of lender status: indemnifying or insuring a non-covered person against loan-related costs or risks; predominantly designing, controlling, or operating the lending activity; holding the trademark or intellectual property rights in the brand, underwriting system, or other core aspects of the business; and purporting to act as agent or service provider for a non-covered person while acting directly as a lender in one or more states.
Subdivision 8 already treated certain non-lenders as lenders based on what they do. The 2026 amendment moved a piece of that idea up into the definition itself. Now a company with “substantial involvement to facilitate, market, generate leads for, underwrite, or collect” is a consumer small loan lender by definition, not only through an anti-evasion clause.
The fight is over who, not how much
Section 47.60 is a licensing law that also prices the product, and the pricing half is unusually clean: one rate, defined to include everything, on a loan that can’t exceed $350 or run past 30 days. The text leaves almost no room for a fee that isn’t a fee.
So the pressure isn’t on the number. It’s on who’s bound by it: the out-of-state website, the bank partner, the lead generator, the servicer that never touches the money. That’s what subdivision 8 goes after, and it’s where the legislature went again in 2026. It’s also why the mismatch I opened with matters. Anyone reading § 47.60 today has to read chapter 124 with it, and in any dispute under this section the first two things I look at are the loan documents and the registration status of everyone who touched the loan.
Madgett Law, LLC represents Minnesota consumers in credit, lending, and debt collection disputes, including claims under the state’s small-loan and short-term-loan statutes and the federal consumer credit laws that run alongside them. Start with the loan documents and the lender’s registration status. Send us a message or call 612-470-6529.
Sources: Minn. Stat. § 47.60 (subd. 1, para. (a) definition of “consumer small loan,” including the single-installment and $350 limits; subd. 1, para. (b) definition of “consumer small loan lender”; subd. 1, para. (c) definition of “annual percentage rate” and its inclusion of all interest, finance charges, and fees; subd. 2, paras. (a)–(g), being the 50 percent APR cap and no-other-charges rule, the 30-calendar-day term, the 2.75 percent per month post-maturity contract rate, the bar on insurance and other charges, the § 604.113 return-check charge allowance and the bar on demanding that section’s civil penalties from the borrower, the anti-rollover and anti-splitting rule and the $350 aggregate cap, and the § 47.603 compliance requirement above 36 percent APR; subd. 3, filing with the commissioner, the $250 per-place-of-business fee, clause (1) liquid assets of at least $50,000, clause (2) biographical statement, and the inclusion of entities without a Minnesota physical location lending over the internet; subd. 4, paras. (a)–(e), books and records, the March 15 annual report, the posted schedule of charges, the 20-day “Paid” or “Canceled” marking, and the 12-by-18-inch “CONSUMER NOTICE REQUIRED BY THE STATE OF MINNESOTA” with its quoted sentence; subd. 5, borrower complaint to the commissioner and the commissioner’s inspection power; subd. 6, liability “in the same manner as in section 47.601, subdivision 6”; subd. 8, paras. (a)–(c), the anti-evasion prohibition and its three named devices, the two-branch agent/service-provider rule, and the four totality-of-the-circumstances factors). Minn. Stat. § 47.601 (subd. 1, para. (e) definition of “consumer short-term loan” and its $1,300 and 60-day/25 percent terms; subd. 1, para. (f) definition of “consumer short-term lender,” which already includes arranging; subd. 6, para. (a) clauses (1)–(5) remedies and the bona fide error exception referencing 15 U.S.C. § 1640(c); subd. 6, para. (b) clauses (1)–(3) voiding the loan). Minn. Stat. § 47.603 (subd. 2, applicability above 36 percent APR; subd. 3, the ability-to-repay determination). Minn. Stat. § 604.113, subd. 2, para. (a) (the $30 dishonored-check service charge and conspicuous-display condition) and para. (b) (the civil penalties § 47.60 bars from being charged to the borrower). Minn. Stat. § 645.02 (paragraph 1, default effective date of August 1 next following final enactment; paragraph 2, July 1 default for an appropriation act or an act having appropriation items). Minn. Stat. § 645.01, subd. 2 (definition of “final enactment” for a bill signed by the governor). Laws 2026, chapter 124 (H.F. 4188), article 1, section 5, amending Minn. Stat. 2024, § 47.60, subd. 1 — the added words “or arranging” and the added definition of arranging; the section carries no effective-date clause; the chapter was presented to the governor May 20, 2026, and signed by the governor May 27, 2026, at 12:30 p.m. Currency note: the Revisor’s codified display of § 47.60 carries a 2026 session banner reading “47.60 subd. 1 has been amended by Chapter 124, Article 1, Section 5” and no other 2026 banner, but the displayed text of subdivision 1, paragraph (b) is the pre-amendment text. Applying § 645.01, subd. 2 and § 645.02 to a May 27, 2026 signature yields an effective date of August 1, 2026 under the general default (July 1, 2026 under the appropriation-act branch); both dates precede 2026-08-10, so the amendment is in force as of this article’s date and the codified display is stale. Subdivision 2 and its dollar and percentage figures were not amended in 2026. All statutory text and the session law: Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes, revisor.mn.gov, 2026-08-10. No case law is cited in this article; it states what these provisions say and does not report how Minnesota courts have construed them. This is general legal information about Minnesota law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship. Every case depends on its own facts. No outcome is promised or implied.