Federal preemption of state usury laws

 To protect consumers, many states have adopted usury laws capping the interest rates that lenders can charge borrowers. There is significant variation among state interest-rate limits: some states have adopted strict usury laws, some have enacted more permissive rules, and others have eliminated usury laws altogether. But federal preemption of state law has diminished the relevance of these differences when it comes to bank lending. Section 85 of the National Bank Act (NBA) allows federally chartered banks to “export” the maximum interest rates of their “home” states, meaning they can charge those rates when lending to borrowers in other states with stricter usury laws. Accordingly, a national bank headquartered in South Dakota—which has no interest-rate limits—need not abide by New York usury law when it lends to New York borrowers. Predictably, this regime has made more permissive states attractive destinations for banks’ credit-card operations. And these shifts have reduced the sway of states that favor stricter limits on high-cost lending.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10512