Conversations about consumer credit often reflect utopian visions of the world. Many people imagine that a few tweaks to regulations can ensure that everyone has the money needed to feed, clothe, and shelter the family. According to this logic, if households need to borrow money, lenders will treat them fairly, charge little, and always be repaid. But no matter how hard we all try, a well-crafted regulatory framework cannot bring us this utopia. Deliberate, empirically informed regulators, however, can do much to preserve and expand consumers’ options along the nonbank-supplied small-dollar loan landscape.