Yes, I agree. The moral issue is allowing people to take out loans that they are unlikely to be able to repay, based on their personal finance history. I don't (yet) see how LendUp does a better job of that for first-time borrowers than any other payday loan company.

Perhaps this is addressed by limiting the first-time loan amount to something small (like $250), and scraping the borrower's online banking statements as part of the approval process in order to predict (based on the account history) whether they are likely to be able to repay within a month. I don't know.