A backlash has ensued, as well, as traditionalists have flirted with timeworn Islamist ideas like imposing interest-free banking and obligatory religious taxes and censoring irreligious discourse.
But they take the opposite attitude towards consumer credit, imposing interest-rate caps that stop lenders reaching as many people as they otherwise might.
The practice is widespread among poppy farmers and effectively imposes interest rates of as much as 500percentt per year on the farmer.
As states have imposed interest rate caps, the lenders have shifted their operations to more hospitable places, including Belize, Malta and the West Indies, where they can more easily evade the statewide ceilings on interest rates.
For banks, the rewards system is also a way to earn revenue, especially in the wake of banking regulations that went into effect last year restricting when and how credit card companies could impose interest rate changes and overdraft fees.
Since June 2013, when the Office of Fair Trading referred the industry for investigation, regulators have imposed interest rate caps, stopped the hated "rollovers" that compounded the fees and told lenders that they could only charge total costs equal to 100% of the original loan.
But they will impose interest rates that they would never be allowed to impose such high interest rates in their own countries, in their own mother countries.
What's more, Clinton insists on imposing an interest rate freeze for five full years.
(Technically, the lower bound refers to the fact that there is a limit in imposing negative interest rates since depositors can switch to cash instead).
MANY issuers are also now imposing higher interest rates, or penalty rates, on customers whose credit ratings decline for any reason, including late payments to other creditors.
