Fact-Checking Policy

Every statistic on PayKedge is double-checked by a second person before it reaches you, then re-checked every 6 to 12 months depending on what it covers. If you need a number you can stake your budget on, here's how we make sure you get it.

How fast do you need the money?

Our fact-checking schedule matches how long your information stays good. Here's what that means for you.

Same-day or tomorrow: your state’s rates and rules

State laws can change after elections or legislative sessions. We re-check ours every 6 months and immediately after any session result.

When you look up your state on PayKedge, the rate caps, cooling-off periods, and rollover rules you see have been verified within that window. If a bill passed yesterday, we catch it on the next sweep—not next year.

This week or next: city-level details

Some cities layer extra rules on top of state law. These pages get re-checked every 12 months and whenever a city ordinance changes.

If your city limits loan locations, bans lending near schools, or adds APR caps below the state level, we have pulled that from the original ordinance text, not a summary site.

General planning: our guides and explainers

Articles in our Learn library—how loans work, what "unbanked" means, ways to compare costs—are re-checked every 12 months. These concepts don't change fast, but the landscape does. We catch it on the cycle.

Where do we get these numbers?

We work from original sources, not articles about articles. Our hierarchy starts with government data and peer-reviewed research. See the full source tiers at our editorial policy.

When an author cites a weaker source, the fact-checker upgrades it. "Approximately 12 million Americans" is the kind of sentence that needs a Tier-1 source, and we will find one or cut the line.

We use Census tables for income, poverty, and unbanked/underbanked counts. We use the Federal Reserve's SHED survey for household economics and bank-fee data. Pew Charitable Trusts supplies peer-reviewed small-dollar lending research. State regulatory portals and National Consumer Law Center round out the legal picture.

What happens when sources disagree?

We surface the conflict. If two Tier-1 studies estimate different borrower counts or calculate APR differently, we present both and explain the gap. We don't average them or pick the one that sounds better.

This matters because loan costs depend on how you count fees, timing, and rollovers. A figure that looks simple rarely is. We show the work.

Our three-step verification

Here is exactly what happens between a writer typing a number and you reading it.

1. Claim extraction. The fact-checker pulls every numeric, legal, or regulatory claim from the draft and lists them.
2. Primary-source verification. For each claim, the fact-checker retrieves the original source—Census table, Fed survey, state statute—within 48 hours. If the author used Tier-3 or Tier-4 material, the fact-checker replaces it with Tier-1 or Tier-2.
3. Reviewer cross-check. A second credentialed editor, not the author, spot-checks 20% of those verifications and signs off in writing.

After publication, the cycle starts again: 6 months for state pages, 12 months for city pages and Learn articles, immediately after any relevant vote or ordinance.

What if we get it wrong?

We log every correction at paykedge.com/corrections/ with the date, the error, and the fix. No asterisk-and-forget.

Borrower questions, answered straight