Rent-A-Center Inc., a rising power in the payday-loan industry, pressured an Ohio food-bank association into quitting a coalition of activists that advocates a crackdown on the business.

In a series of telephone calls in recent weeks, Rent-A-Center executives warned America's Second Harvest and its Ohio affiliates that Rent-A-Center would yank charitable contributions from hunger programs in the state unless the local food banks withdrew from the Ohio Coalition for Responsible Lending. The coalition has been pressing the state legislature to cap high interest rates charged on payday loans.

Wednesday, the Ohio House passed a bill that would cap the annualized interest rate on payday loans at 28% and limit borrowers to four loans of $500 each a year. Ohio's governor said last week that he supports a cap.

Rent-A-Center currently charges interest rates on one-week payday loans that are equivalent to an annual rate of as much as 782%, according to a company Web site. In Ohio, the average borrower pays $15 for each $100 borrowed, and the typical loan is repaid in 19 days, a 288.16% annual rate, the company says.

"We must have our name taken off the Web page of the Ohio Coalition for Responsible Lending," Anne Goodman, chairman of the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks, wrote in an email to a subordinate April 18. America's Second Harvest, the Ohio association's parent, "got another call today from Rent-A-Center, as they thought it would be gone by now."

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Gus Whitcomb, a vice president at Rent-A-Center, based in Plano, Texas, confirmed that he and a colleague called food-bank officials repeatedly to say the company did not want its $500,000 pledge used to promote antipayday legislation. "No business is going to support an organization whose primary purpose is to hurt its customers or put its employees in the unemployment line," Mr. Whitcomb said in an interview.

Ms. Goodman said in an interview that endorsing the anti-payday-lending coalition was an error and a violation of the food banks' own rules. "Nobody has put any pressure on us," she said. The Ohio Association of Foodbanks "would never support anything that isn't directly hunger related."

Rent-A-Center's tactics come amid recent battles over payday lending from Oregon to Virginia. The move toward tighter regulation is part of a broader attempt by local, state and federal authorities to rein in expensive lending aimed at lower-income consumers, such as subprime mortgages and certain credit cards.

Bill Faith, legislative chairman of the Ohio Coalition for Responsible Lending, said it is "out of bounds" for a corporate donor to try to use its financial clout to change the public-policy position of a nonprofit organization. "They're just trying to buy people off," Mr. Faith said.

Charles W. Hall, a tax lawyer at Fulbright & Jaworski in Houston, said Rent-A-Center's action falls into a "gray area." In general, a company can't deduct a charitable gift if it receives something of value in return, but it is unclear whether pressuring a charity would invalidate the deductibility of a gift, Mr. Hall said.

Rent-A-Center executives said the rate cap proposed in Ohio would force the company to shut down its Cash AdvantEdge operations in the state, home to 53 of the company's 276 financial-services locations nationwide. Such a bill "will end the payday-lending industry in Ohio, like a similar rate cap did in Oregon last year," Dwight Dumler, Rent-A-Center's assistant general counsel, wrote in answers to questions about the company's Ohio lobbying campaign.

The company, like others in the business, says it helps people on the financial edge get through to the next paycheck. Mr. Dumler said consumers would otherwise have to use "more-costly short-term credit, such as overdraft protection, late fees, and offshore Internet lending."

Consumer advocates and antipoverty activists say poor borrowers often have to take out other loans to pay off the initial ones, accumulating penalty fees and debts several times the value of the original loans.

These arguments caught the attention of state lawmakers from both parties, as well as Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat, who last week threw his weight behind the idea of a rate cap. "Greed is a nasty business," said state Rep. William Batchelder, a self-described Reagan Republican from Medina County and one of the main sponsors of the rate-cap bill.

Backing Mr. Batchelder's effort is the Ohio Coalition for Responsible Lending, which comprises nearly 250 groups, from the United Way of Central Ohio to the YMCA of Columbus. The Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks joined the coalition last year.

A 2006 survey by the association found that about 15% of the families who turned to the food banks for help had used check-cashing or payday-loan services in the prior year.

As the political debate heated up, a Rent-A-Center employee spotted the Second Harvest name on the coalition's Web site and alerted Rent-A-Center's Mr. Whitcomb.

Last year, the company made its first $125,000 payment on a four-year, $500,000 pledge to America's Second Harvest, a network that includes more than 200 food banks and food-rescue organizations. America's Second Harvest had expenditures of $696 million in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2007. Rent-A-Center also provides separate support to a Second Harvest food bank in Texas.

Company officials called the charity's national headquarters for an explanation, Mr. Whitcomb said. When the food banks remained on the coalition Web site, company officials called again and complained to Ms. Goodman, the chairman of the Ohio food-bank association. Mr. Whitcomb said he made clear in the calls that unless the Ohio food banks withdrew from the antipayday coalition, Rent-A-Center would demand that none of its contribution be used in the state.

"We give cash to this charity, which we expect is disseminated to food banks around the country to help them fight hunger," Mr. Whitcomb said. "But we want to ensure that our money is going to that cause and that cause only."

Ms. Goodman, who is a board member of America's Second Harvest, blamed a subordinate, and she said she ordered her association to withdraw from the coalition.

According to a written annual plan for the state association, Ms. Goodman and the other board members last year directed staff to "provide leadership and serve" in the anti-payday-lending coalition. Ms. Goodman said that those directives were "unfortunate" and that the full board "didn't have an understanding" that it was supporting a particular policy.

Write to Michael M. Phillips at michael.phillips@wsj.com