When Ridgeland, Miss.-based BankPlus started offering its Credit Plus product as a safe alternative to payday loans, CEO Bill Ray expected most of the business would be from financially precarious low-income borrowers. But Ray was surprised to find that many customers were not low-income -- rather, they were middle-income borrowers who had fallen on hard times and "never had any financial literacy training and got caught up in the payday lending habit." The product offers low-interest loans up to $1,000 for consumers who agree to open accounts at the bank and enroll in a financial literacy seminar. To date, 14,500 have received consumer loans from the bank and 80% of those borrowers still have accounts at the bank.