Let’s have ‘pray day’ loans

The church still has the opportunity to come to the rescue.

It’s the latest joke on Twitter Papiss Cisse has apologised for refusing to wear Newcastle United’s Wonga strip and has promised to give 4,500% this season.

Nice one. You hardly need to know the Senegalese striker to appreciate his simple but powerful gesture or the joke at the payday loan firm’s expense.

Papiss said Wonga’s tactics offended his Muslim faith and personal beliefs. But after missing a week-long pre-season training camp with his team in Portugal, he’s mellowed that tough stand.

But it didn’t take a week for another anti-Wonga move to go pear-shaped.

The new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby announced ambitious plans for the church to support credit unions as better, bona fide, community-based alternatives to payday lenders. He said the Church would help “compete” Wonga out of business.

Admirably tough talk.

The payday loans company has witty TV ads, a £24m sponsorship deal with Newcastle and a forthcoming “endurance” show with Channel 5 called Go Hard Or Go Home (I kid you not).

But the public isn’t fooled. Where does all that sponsorship cash come from? Sky-high interest rates paid by the poorest, most desperate people in Britain.

And though payday lending is legal, the Competition Commission is set to investigate the whole £2 billion industry.

So the Archbishop’s “Get Wonga” move looked well-timed. But the very next day, it emerged his church indirectly holds a £75,000 stake in Wonga. It was a spectacular own goal just 24 hours after he’d declared Holy War on the moneylenders in a rousing House of Lords speech.

So has the revelation wrecked the Archbishop’s tactics?

Of course not. Embarrassment hardly matters to folk at the sharp end, absolutely desperate to get cash for life’s necessities.

And this is the big challenge facing credit unions. How can they match the payday giants?

The Credit Unions want to strike up deals with loan applicants’ employers. That makes sense. But for casually employed staff and folk without jobs that won’t work.

Yet the credit unions can’t hand out silly money without risking the cash of depositors other folk living on the breadline.

This is where the Church could really come to the rescue not just backing credit unions with leaflets and church premises but investing in them. The Wonga woopsadaisy showed the Church of England has a whopping £5.2 billion pension fund, more than twice the size of all the payday loan companies put together.

I’m not suggesting they shell out the cash it’s there to fund ministers’ pensions but it could be invested in credit unions.

Instead of sitting on the sidelines, the Church could be shareholders helping shape the credit union alternative to Wonga.

In a former life, the Archbishop was an oil trader so he’ll know about the power of the Norwegian Oil Fund to change policy by switching investments.

Our neighbour’s canny oil investments have created a moral juggernaut which knocked several pence off tobacco share prices by announcing its intention to sell its holdings.

Could the Archbishop use Church funds to create an equally powerful Faith Fund?

We certainly need someone to knock sense into the situation.

Our MPs still won’t vote through a legal cap on interest rates which would be the easiest way to control Wonga and its high-flying friends. In Germany with a cap of 20%, payday lending is almost unknown.

So don’t be “irritated and embarrassed” at the Wonga gaffe Justin. Keep going. Think bigger until you shame MPs into passing the legislation and finally safeguard the nation’s poorest people from the sharks.