Visit one of County Bank's seven branches in and around Rehoboth Beach, Del., and your chances of obtaining a small unsecured loan are pretty slim.
But log on to 500fastcash.com, FreewayCash.com, MrSpeedyCash.com, or any of the 20 Web sites whose loans it funds, and $144 million-asset County Bank will gladly advance you a few hundred dollars. 
County Bank's high Internet profile is part of a nationwide marketing blitz designed to win it a bigger slice of the lucrative and rapidly growing payday loan market, one it says it has been "ramping up" since 1998. It is also running ads in hundreds of business directories and in consumer yellow pages nationally.
Jean Ann Fox, the director of consumer protection for the Consumer Federation of America, said at least 10 other banks are involved in payday lending. But she and other observers say none are pushing it the way County is.
"As other banks have pulled back" from payday lending, "County Bank has moved in," said Ms. Fox, a vocal opponent of the practice.
And while its strategy has made it a target for advocates like Ms. Fox, not to mention lawmakers, banking regulators, and trial lawyers, it has also fattened County's bottom line. Its interest income jumped 51.6%, to $11.9 million, last year and was a record $3.45 million in the first quarter of 2001. Its net income jumped 17.5% in 2000, to $2.2 million. First-quarter 2001 net income was $495,000 on revenues of $4.85 million.
"Demand for the product has been unbelievable," said David Gillen, who manages payday lending at County Bank.
In typical payday loans, customers get a short-term loan usually of $500 or less, to which they will write a postdated check cashed after their next payday.
Like other banks involved in payday lending, County Bank works through loan servicers, typically check cashers. According to Mr. Gillen, County sells a portion of its payday loan portfolio to each of its servicers.
For the past year Mr. Gillen has been busy lining up more servicers, and he says the list has grown from 14 to 20. Those he is negotiating with include Cincinnati-based Check 'n Go, whose 680 stores in 25 states make it the nation's second-largest check casher.
County Bank's growth has come at a price. A New York woman sued it this year, and a Georgetown law professor who is suing another payday lender says he plans to go after County and as many others as he can.
Alice Slater, a spokeswoman for Community Financial Services of America, the payday loan industry's trade association, said about 180 million payday loans, with a gross dollar volume of around $45 billion, will be made next year.
At ACE Cash Express in Irving, Tex., the nation's biggest payday lender, officials expect to make as many as 1.6 million payday loans next year and to generate about $59 million of interest income from them.
Lenders tend to charge $15 to $24 per $100 borrowed, so a borrower of $300 must pay back $345 to $372 when the loan comes due - usually about two weeks after it is made. Those who cannot repay at the end of two weeks can extend the terms, but interest is assessed every two weeks, and borrowers often end up paying hundreds of dollars in fees.
It is these cases that critics have seized upon in their attacks on payday lending.
But Gregory Elliehausen, a professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business who co-authored a study of payday lending published in April, said that only about 10% of the people surveyed for the study needed extra time to pay back their loans.
"Banning payday loans would prevent these abuses, but it would also prevent the people who may be benefiting from using this product," Mr. Elliehausen said.
Payday lenders have faced a number of class-action lawsuits in recent years, and lawmakers in several states have proposed legislation aimed at these companies. A $500 million suit filed this month against Goleta National Bank in California charges that the subsidiary of $420 million-asset Community West Bancshares conspired to skirt state laws that put caps on interest rates. Goleta makes payday loans at annual interest rates topping 440% and then sells them to its partner, ACE Cash Express.
"It's purely predatory," said Gary Peller, a Georgetown University Law Center Professor who filed the suit against Goleta and ACE. "Our investigation found that ACE and its competitors engaged in nothing less than old-time loan-sharking and racketeering."
Mr. Peller, who is seeking class-action status for his suit against Goleta and ACE, said he intended to sue every bank involved in payday lending, including County Bank.
"This has been a bonanza" for County, "and it's coming on strong, but I'm very confident it's going to backfire on them and on the others," Mr. Peller said.
