Michigan licenses payday lenders as deferred presentment service providers, and the Deferred Presentment Service Transactions Act requires each licensee to furnish a $50,000 surety bond to the commissioner — today the Department of Insurance and Financial Services (DIFS) — under MCL 487.2134(4). Premiums cost 1.5% of the bond amount, $100 minimum; the application collects no credit information, and most applications approve instantly. Enter the amount your filing requires and your exact price appears at the application.
















There is no long underwriting queue on the standard $50,000 filing — enter your amount, pay, and file the executed bond with your DIFS license application or renewal. Here is the whole thing:
Your company details, the bond amount your license requires, and an effective date. That is the entire application — no financial statements to assemble first.
The application collects no credit information and most applications approve instantly. Because the penal sum runs five figures, an underwriter may glance at a larger filing — if a check ever runs, it is a soft pull that will not touch your score.
Your executed bond and power of attorney arrive by email, ready to file with the Office of Consumer Finance alongside your license application or your August renewal. Wet-ink original mailed on request.
Michigan does not use the phrase “payday loan” in its statute. It calls the product a deferred presentment service transaction: a customer writes a personal check, the lender advances cash, and the lender agrees to hold the check for a period before presenting it. The Deferred Presentment Service Transactions Act, 2005 PA 244, licenses the businesses that do this, and under MCL 487.2131 a separate license is required for each location. Chartered banks, savings and loan associations, savings banks, and insured credit unions sit outside the act entirely.
The bond is one half of the act’s financial-responsibility test. MCL 487.2132(a) requires net worth of at least $50,000 for each licensed location, capped at $250,000 for any one licensee, and MCL 487.2134(4) requires the $50,000 surety bond on top of the license fee — written by a bonding or insurance company authorized to do business in Michigan, on a form satisfactory to the commissioner, and posted “to secure the performance of its obligations.” Where one person holds 20% or more of two or more licensees, the group furnishes a single bond.
What the bond stands behind is the conduct the act polices: the $600 ceiling on a single transaction, the tiered service fee, the statewide database check before a transaction is written, the restitution remedy of five times the fee charged on a violation the licensee concedes, and the private civil cause of action in MCL 487.2173. It is not insurance for you — if the surety pays a claim, you repay the surety. Keep it continuous: the license expires September 30 and the renewal is due by August 1.
These are the actual issuing fields — submit them with the bond amount your license requires. Five-figure penal sums sometimes draw a brief underwriter look before the bond releases.
Start the application →Enter the $50,000 amount, see your exact price at the application, and file with DIFS the same day. Free until issued.