Actually, there is no such thing as a licensed payday lender in Texas. Texas' safe harbor legislation died in the 2005 legislature and the issue can't come up till the next legislature meets in 2007. What you have in Texas are storefronts operating under the CSO model and internet lenders operating in other states that you can use at your own risk.
If you want to look up licensees for other types of consumer loans, just go to the Texas Finance Commission's website,
http://www.fc.state.tx.us/
However, the lack of a Texas license does not end the issue. While just about everyone in this forum is absolutely convinced that the borrower's state controls the loan, I think the jury is very much out on that legally. I'll give you a few examples of why I feel this way:
1) There is a major case coming up in Kansas between Quik Payday and the Acting Bank Commissioner in which the lender sued the Commissioner for an injunction against her enforcing Kansas law against a Utah lender. That case is moving forward and the decision will probably come next year.
2) No state attorney general has ever successfully brought a lawsuit against an out-of-state internet lender for violating usury laws. Not even aggressive guys like New York's Spitzer. The closest was settlement - with no admission of wrongdoing - between Colorado and Quik Payday that was reached before a suit was filed. In contrast, Massachussetts sent out 91 C&D's and there only enforcement has been to complain to the media that few lenders responded, let alone obeyed them.
Most AG's only bring action in the easy cases, i.e., storefront guys who claim their offering rebates instead of payday loans, etc. They're politicians who make grand pronouncements about the "evils" of payday lending, but take only the most feeble action. A perfect example - California's attorney general just got big headlines for filing a lawsuit against a storefront chain for collection violations. His press release neglected to mention that a) the chain has been out of business for months; b) there are no known assets to pay any judgment; and c) the chain's owner is believed to have left the country. In other words, the AG did what state AG's normally do. He avoided the difficult case take one with maximum press and no likely no opposition in court. (Of course, last year a federal judge laughed at California's attempt to regulate an online timeshare broker from Texas. So, I can't blame him for being a little gunshy.)
3) Some states, like Pennsylvania, concede that their laws only apply to lenders with a physical presence in the state. Lenders soliciting residents from elsewhere are not required to be licensed as long as they are licensed and compliant with their home state laws.
4) Some states, like Texas, have no payday lending law at all. Those states must look to other parts of their banking laws to see where the loans were made in a legal sense. And many of these favor the lender on the question. (Since they were enacted to protect the state's own businesses from outside suits, rather than the state's consumers from outside businesses.)
5) Since the lender is operating from another state, even if the borrower's state has a legitimate claim logic suggests that lender's state has some auhority over the lender, too. Where these regulatory schemes collide a conflict of law exists. (Assuming, of course, that the choice-of-law clause in the contract is invalid.) Many states, like Minnesota, have longstanding policies for these situations wherein courts generally must apply the state's law which would save, rather than void, the contract.
Even though payday loans weren't even invented when these policies came into being, a payday loan contract is still a contract and whether its valid or not still must be determined under general contract principles.
6) Most payday loan contracts contain a binding arbitration clause. Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled - in a case specifically about payday loans - that even illegal contracts must go to an arbitration if the arbitration clause standing alone is not invalid. And the arbitrator gets to decide which state's laws apply.
7) Courts generally don't throw out choice of law clauses as cavalierly as you might believe. Even in a "Contract of Adhesion" (basically, your standard take-it-or-leave-it, pre-printed contract) courts generally will not set aside the clause as long as the chosen state bears some reasonable relationship to the transaction.
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