A recent law that cut down the number of payday loan a resident of Virginia can get has significantly reduced the number of cash advance loans in Virginia.

In 2008 payday lenders in Virginia (VA) approved nearly 3.4 million payday loans, or about 281,000 each month. Now in 2008 by the end of May, lenders had issued only 226,807 loans – an average of 45,000 per month – an 84 percent decline.

This data is by The Bureau of Financial Institutions. They derived the data from a database that began tracking the loans since Jan 2009. The database was required as part of reforms that passed the General Assembly in 2008.

In December 2008, legislators ended three years of debate and passed a law that limited borrowers to one payday loan at a time and extended the length of time (almost doubled) they have to repay it, effectively limiting how many loans they can get each year.