Refunds from payday lender

The UK's second biggest payday lender is to refund over £700,000 of interest and default charges to 6,247 customers who couldn't afford to borrow as much as they were given.

The firm involved is Dollar, an American group which has 24 per cent of the payday market in the UK and includes The Money Shop, Payday UK, Payday Express, and Ladder Loans.

The mistake was due to a "systems error" which resulted in loans being approved for amounts above normal lending criteria between between January 2013 and April 2014.

The financial watchdog, the FCA, says Dollar has agreed to provide cash refunds totalling £79,000, with the remainder of customers having their outstanding balance reduced.

Later this week the FCA is expected to outline a cap on the cost of credit from payday lenders.

Pound on the rise

The pound's value measured against a basket of other currencies, including the dollar and the euro, has reached its highest level for more than 4 years.

The trade-weighted index stands at 85.0. It was last at that level on 5th August 2009, during a rally as the financial crisis and recession began to take hold.

The pound has been surging ahead amid growing hopes about the scale of the economic recovery.

The called the trade-weighted index, called the effective exchange rate by the Bank of England, shows the pound's value in comparison to the currencies of our main trading partners.

The index was based at 100 in January, 2005. It fell to 74 in late 2008.