I was told that the mafia in the US lost a lot of business with the rise of credit cards but I can't find a source for that. Some researchers say that people turn to payday loans not only because they don't have access to bank loans but because the charging structure for payday loans is transparent and up-front:

"But most of the RiteCheck customers I interviewed had done the math and found that it was less expensive to use RiteCheck than to use a bank. In their experience, required minimum balances and fees for everything from ATM usage to account maintenance were going up."

https://www.philadelphiafed.org/community-development/public...

PS I'm not sure I'd call the payday lenders savoury myself, though they be less unsavoury than loan sharks.