Payday lenders won a major victory on Wednesday after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau moved to gut tougher restrictions that were to take effect later this year.

The industry has spent years trying to fend off the new rules, which were conceived during the Obama administration. The regulations were intended to prevent spiraling debt obligations by limiting the number of consecutive loans that could be made and requiring lenders to verify that borrowers could pay back their loans on time while still covering basic living expenses.

In her first major policy move, the bureau’s new director, Kathleen Kraninger, proposed eliminating nearly all of the regulation’s substantive requirements, including the “ability to repay” mandate. There was “insufficient evidence and legal support” for the provision, the bureau said. It also sought to drop a limit that would have prevented lenders from making more than three short-term loans without a 30-day “cooling off” period.

A payday loan customer who borrows $500 would typically owe about $575 two weeks later — an annual percentage rate of nearly 400 percent. If borrowers cannot repay their loans on time, they often borrow more and deepen their debt. It is a hard cycle to break: Half of all payday loans are part of a sequence that stretches at least 10 consecutive loans, according to the consumer bureau’s data.