Maryland Earned Wage Access Law: What It Requires Now

Maryland's earned wage access law now treats these advances as a form of consumer credit, regulating what used to be an informal perk your employer might offer. House Bill 1294 (Chapter 847), which took effect October 1, 2025, created a dedicated licensing framework under the Maryland Consumer Loan Law, according to the Maryland General Assembly's official bill page for HB 1294. That single change puts Maryland ahead of states that still treat EWA apps as a legal gray area, a comparison covered in more depth in our look at earned wage access versus payday loans, and it means the app on your phone answers to a state regulator now, whether it says so in its marketing or not.

If you're a Maryland worker deciding whether to tap an advance before payday, here's what changed, what changes next, and what you should check before you link a paycheck advance app to your bank account.

Picture the ordinary use case: a hospital tech in Baltimore picks up an extra shift, opens an app, and taps a button to get a slice of those wages a few days before the scheduled payday. That transaction used to sit in a regulatory blind spot in Maryland. Now it sits inside a licensing statute with a named regulator behind it, which changes what recourse you have if something about the transaction goes wrong. If the fee looks off, or the app quietly changes how it counts your available balance, you now have somewhere specific to send a complaint.

What Maryland's Earned Wage Access Law Requires

HB 1294 added a new subtitle to Title 12 of the Commercial Law Article, the same title that houses Maryland's Consumer Loan Law, and it covers both models on the market: the employer-integrated product your HR department might roll out, and the direct-to-consumer app you download yourself. Providers of either kind now need a state license to operate in Maryland, per the bill's official summary on the Maryland General Assembly site.

The distinction matters because plenty of workers assume an employer-run benefit is somehow exempt from state oversight simply because HR set it up. Under Maryland's law, it isn't. The payroll vendor running that benefit needs the same license as the app you'd download on your own.

Licensing is the load-bearing piece here. A licensed provider answers to the Office of Financial Regulation (OFR). An unlicensed one operating in the state after October 1, 2025 is now breaking the law simply by doing business here, regardless of what fees it charges.

The statute also sets limits on what a provider can charge. According to Chime's employer-facing summary of the law, corroborated by a Goodwin Law client alert summarizing the new law's provisions, the law caps fees at $5 for advances up to $75 and $7.50 for advances above that amount, a structure comparable to what we break down in what earned wage access fees really cost. Legal analysts reading the enacted chapter reported that figure as a summary of the statute's language.

Separately, providers must offer at least one no-cost option for a consumer to access earned wages and must disclose that option clearly, per Chime's summary. If your app never mentions a free way to get your money, ask about it directly.

A companion regulation, COMAR .09.03.10, took final effect July 20, 2026 and requires EWA providers to submit specified operating information to OFR, according to the OFR's own industry advisory on the reporting rule. The rule gives the regulator visibility into who's operating and how.

How Maryland Treated EWA Before the Law

Before HB 1294, Maryland had no EWA statute at all. The Office of Financial Regulation's approach, laid out in an August 2023 consumer advisory, drew a line between two kinds of products, applying a different test to each, per the 2023 OFR consumer advisory on earned wage access.

Employer-paid EWA, where the money comes from an employer paying out wages the worker had already earned, was not treated as a loan at all. That made sense on its face: the employer already owed the money, so paying it early wasn't an extension of credit. Third-party EWA, where an outside company fronts the cash and gets repaid from your next paycheck, needed a case-by-case analysis of the facts under that same advisory, according to law-firm write-ups summarizing the guidance (Greenberg Traurig and Gordon Feinblatt), meaning OFR looked at each provider's structure to decide whether it was functioning as an unlicensed lender.

That case-by-case approach left a real gap. A worker had no way to look up a bright-line rule and know in advance whether a given app needed a license, and OFR made those calls one provider at a time.

HB 1294 closed that gap by classifying covered EWA products as consumer credit outright, which is a stronger and more explicit stance than the facts-and-circumstances test it replaced. An older article describing Maryland's approach as case-by-case is describing the pre-2025 rule; it does not reflect the one in force today.

What Changes October 1, 2026

A second bill, SB 94 (Chapter 170), tightens the rules further and takes effect October 1, 2026. According to the Maryland General Assembly's official bill page for SB 94, SB 94 prohibits EWA providers from soliciting a tip or giving a consumer the option to provide one. It also revises advertising practices, according to reporting from HRMorning.

The bill passed the House 100 to 36 on April 13, 2026 and the Senate 32 to 13 on March 19, 2026, and Governor Wes Moore signed it into law on April 28, 2026. This is a shift from HB 1294's original approach, which allowed tipping as long as it defaulted to zero and the app disclosed it clearly. SB 94 removes tips from the picture entirely.

For a Maryland worker, the practical effect lands on October 1, 2026: any app still asking you to leave a tip on an advance, or nudging you toward one with a slider that defaults above zero, will be operating outside the law once that date arrives. Until October 1, 2026, HB 1294 allowed tips if the app defaulted to zero and disclosed them clearly, so don't assume the ban is already in effect.

How Maryland's Rate Cap Applies

HB 1294 didn't invent fee regulation from nothing. It put EWA in the same Title 12 framework as the Consumer Loan Law, conceptually tying its fee structure to the rate-cap logic Title 12 already uses. Section 12-306 of the Commercial Law Article sets the rate ceiling that governed loans in this state long before an app ever charged a fee.

For loans under $2,000, the cap works in tiers based on the unpaid balance: 2.75% a month on the portion up to $500, 2% a month on the portion from $500 to $700, and 1.25% a month on anything above $700. Larger loans get their own ceilings: 1.75% a month for loans between $2,000 and $3,500, and 1.5% a month for loans between $3,500 and $5,000.

This structure matters because it's the regime EWA fees now function inside of, conceptually, even though EWA advances typically fall well below the loan sizes that section spells out in dollar terms. Maryland already had a legal ceiling on what it costs to borrow a small amount for a short time. HB 1294's move was to say EWA counts as that kind of borrowing, treating it as part of the existing framework.

Connecticut has taken a similar approach, treating these advances under its own lending law. Other states, including California's registration-based model, have chosen a lighter-touch approach, keeping EWA outside their rate-capped loan frameworks. Where a state lands on that question shapes how much leverage a worker actually has if a fee dispute ends up in front of a regulator.

Which Cash Advance Apps Work in Maryland

Maryland's licensing law doesn't come with a public, easy-to-browse list of every cash advance app approved to operate in the state, and no verified roster of currently licensed providers was confirmed for this article. That means the responsibility for checking falls on you before you link a bank account to any app.

Start with OFR's own licensee records. The Office of Financial Regulation maintains licensing information for the entities it regulates, and a company operating an EWA product in Maryland after October 1, 2025 should show up there if it's following the law. If a search turns up nothing for the company behind an app you're considering, that's a reason to ask questions before you connect it to your paycheck.

Second, read the app's own terms and its Maryland-specific disclosures, if it has any. A licensed provider generally has an incentive to say so, since it's a compliance selling point. An app that's vague about where it's licensed, or that copies the same terms across every state without mentioning Maryland's rules at all, deserves a closer look before you trust it with recurring access to your bank account.

Third, remember that HB 1294 covers both employer-integrated and direct-to-consumer models. If your employer offers an EWA benefit through a payroll partner, that partner is now covered by the same licensing requirement as a standalone app you'd download yourself. Ask your HR department which provider they use and whether it's licensed in Maryland, the same way you'd check a standalone app.

Licensing status is only part of the picture. A direct-to-consumer app usually asks for read access to your bank account and your pay history to figure out how much you can draw. That's a separate decision from whether the provider holds a Maryland license, and it's worth asking what the app does with that data, how long it keeps it, and whether it shares it with anyone beyond what's needed to run the advance. Licensing tells you the fee and disclosure rules apply; it doesn't tell you how carefully a given company handles the bank credentials and pay-history data it's asking to see.

What a Maryland Worker Should Check Before Using One

Before you connect any app to your bank account or paycheck, run through a short list:

• Is the provider licensed with Maryland's Office of Financial Regulation? Check directly rather than taking the app's word for it.
• Does the app disclose a no-cost option for getting your money, and how many days does that free option actually take?
• What does the fee come to on the advance size you'd actually use? An app's advertised minimum can differ from what you actually pay.
• If the app still shows a tip prompt, is it defaulted to zero, and can you decline it without friction? Remember that tipping becomes fully banned on October 1, 2026 under SB 94.
• What's the repayment date, and does it line up with when your paycheck actually lands? A mistimed debit against a low balance can trigger an overdraft that costs more than the advance fee itself.
• Can you cancel the advance or revoke bank access easily, and does the app say what happens if you can't repay on time?

None of these questions require legal training to ask. They just require reading past the app's marketing screen to the actual terms, which is exactly what Maryland's new licensing law is designed to make worth doing: a licensed provider has to disclose its no-cost option; an unlicensed one is operating outside the law entirely.

Comparing a fee-based advance against Maryland's own consumer loan rate structure can also help you judge whether a given charge is reasonable for the amount and the timeframe, the same comparison worth making between earned wage access and payday loans generally. And if you're weighing more than one app side by side, working through how to choose a cash advance app before you commit to one is worth doing.