The Consumer Finance Association has announced plans to develop a price comparison website for payday loan customers and expand the industry’s data-sharing capabilities.

Speaking exclusively to Credit Today John Lamidey, chief executive of the Association (CFA), said the data-sharing side of payday lending had expanded massively, with four new players entering that specific market.

Following this expansion, Lamidey said the industry was now working to harvest real-time data on customers and combine it with mainstream data provided by the "big three" credit reference agencies, to give payday lenders a better picture of their customers.

This, he said, was necessary as the short-term nature of payday loans meant that mainstream data, which is often updated monthly, was too out of date to provide an accurate enough profile of a payday loan customer.

He said: "The whole credit reference agency industry grew up on mainstream loans so the reporting is only on a monthly basis, which is no good if you are only lending for a month.

"We are working with specialists to improve the