The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will rewrite its payday loan rule, with new proposed regulations to come in Jan. 2019, the agency announced Friday.

In a Friday release announcing the planned changes, the bureau said it will revisit a key provision of the rule, which required that payday lenders verify that borrowers are able to repay loans before they issue them.

The current rule as written, which includes the ability-to-repay requirement, was scheduled to take effect in the summer of 2019. The provision was set during former CFPB Director Richard Cordray’s tenure, before Trump appointee Mick Mulvaney took over on an acting basis and moved to rework the payday regulations.

Friday's move figures to set off a storm of criticism from progressives, who hailed the rule’s previous iteration as a landmark achievement of the bureau.

In a short statement announcing the planned rule change, the bureau said it planned to change that provision, “in significant part because the ability-to-repay provisions have much greater consequences for both consumers and industry than the payment provisions.”

The payday lending rule – which also applies to vehicle title and other high interest rate loans – has been subject to a high amount of lobbying because lenders fear that it would curb their business. Consumer advocates have also lobbied heavily to keep the current rule in place.

Those groups blasted the bureau’s decision.

“The consumer bureau used to be a great agency dedicated to enforcing the law and protecting consumers, is now to putting predatory lenders ahead of the law and its mission with this attempt to gut consumer protections,” said Jose Alcoff, payday campaign manager at Americans for Financial Reform, in a statement.

The Center for Responsible Lending also hammered Friday’s announcement.

“This predatory lending business model relies on a borrower’s inability to repay their loans, which leads to a long-term cycle of very high-cost debt. This in turn often causes a downward spiral of bank penalty fees, defaulting on other bills, and even bankruptcy,” said Rebecca Borne, senior counsel for the group, in a statement.