FERGUSON, Mo. (MarketWatch) — If you drive the two-mile stretch of West Florissant Avenue that was the epicenter of nearly two weeks of protests and rioting in the aftermath of the police shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown, the first thing you’ll notice is that there is a lot to buy.

Traveling south from I-270 toward the city’s boundary at Lucas-Hunt Road, there are a dozen fast-food restaurants — Taco Bell, McDonald’s MCD, -1.03% , Domino’s DPZ, +0.63% , Arby’s — and a Target TGT, +0.82% , Walgreens XE:WGN, Dollar General DG, +2.26% , Sam’s Club, Wal-Mart WMT, -1.02% — just about every national retailer you can imagine.

In that way, Ferguson’s main drag isn’t much different than any other business corridor in the heartland.

That is, except for familiar banking names. Ferguson isn’t entirely void of banks. There is a Great Southern Bank GSBC, -0.68% branch, a First National Bank and two credit unions. Bank of America Corp. BAC, -0.55% , U.S. Bancorp USB, -0.71% and United Missouri Bank UMBF, -0.77% have automatic teller machines along the strip. But for branches, you’ll have to go to neighboring Florissant.

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. JPM, -0.21% , Citigroup Inc. C, -1.47% and Wells Fargo & Co. WFC, +0.08% don’t operate branches in the St. Louis area. They offer brokerage and mortgage services, but those offices are in affluent parts of the county and in the city of St. Louis.

That said, there are ample financial services in Ferguson. ACE Cash Express operates two branches on the thoroughfare. There are at least six more payday lenders. QuickCash has a presence, as does Advance America. If a Ferguson resident needs a little more than their next paycheck can afford them, TitleMax Title Loans promises up to $10,000 in short order.

Those storefronts are bigger and bolder than any bank you’ve ever seen. There are huge “cash” and “$$$” signs.

“There are a lot of people who are unbanked,” said Todd Swanstrom, a professor of public policy at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. “They don’t have enough cash on hand to maintain a minimum deposit, and they need the cash now.”

Swanstrom said it’s not always an initial need for money that drives the poor of Ferguson to payday lenders. They go to rollover existing debt they can’t pay down, he said.

“They get caught in a cycle,” one that’s tough to break, given “the relative dearth of conventional banks.”

St. Louis, at 9.7%, ranks among the highest metro areas for unbanked residents. A total of 29% of African-Americans in the community are unbanked, compared with only 3% for white residents, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. It’s the widest racial gap in the nation.

Payday lenders in Missouri charge average annual interest rates of 455%, according to a ProPublica study. That they are flourishing in Ferguson is, perhaps, no surprise. Ferguson has a decisive African-American majority. Nationally, African-Americans use payday loans at a greater rate than whites, according to a Pew Charitable Trusts study.

Usage of payday loans in Missouri is pegged at 11%, second only to Oklahoma, 13%, among states where data is available, according to Pew.

The recent strife in Ferguson wasn’t caused by a lack of affordable and accessible financial services, but community leaders say the two are linked. Hardship in the region was made worse by the Great Recession and mortgage crisis. It’s created a transient population of down-and-outers who shift from rental property to rental property.

“The ability to move forward was made harder,” said Chris Krehmeyer, chief executive of Beyond Housing, a nonprofit housing, community and financial-assistance organization that serves the region.

At least one bank branch in the region is there through the urging of Beyond Housing, which counts executives from Bank of America and United Missouri Bank on its board.

Krehmeyer sees Ferguson’s robust payday-loan industry as a sign that chronic economic issues — high unemployment, foreclosure rates, housing values that have not recovered (they’re down 37% from the pre-recession peak) — have left many in Ferguson credit-poor and with records so blemished they can’t get credit at a traditional bank.

“It’s an indicator that there’s a market there” for payday lenders, Krehmeyer said. “If you have blemishes significant in your past,” payday lending is one of few options to the cash-strapped. “It’s hard to get off that treadmill.”

When U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder visited Ferguson on Aug. 20, he primarily focused on police relations in the community. Patrick Green, the mayor of Normandy, a neighboring city, attended the closed meeting with Holder. In an interview, he told me economic issues didn’t come up.

Green understood that wasn’t the primary purpose of Holder’s visit. But, he said, the issues are closely linked. Much of Ferguson’s unrest has to do with the transient population in its rental-apartment complexes — such as the one shooting victim Brown lived in — and whether someone there can get a job.

Swanstrom, the professor at the University of Missouri, said Ferguson suffers from “socio-economic segregation.”

“It’s place as well as race,” he said. “The place has created an incendiary situation” through high rates of poverty, trends in the retail banking center and weak civic institutions.

It’s really more than that. The presence of a banking industry and access to affordable credit create a stronger sense of community. Home ownership and small businesses, financed through banks, are the economic lifeblood of cities and neighborhoods.

Moreover, Mayor Green says a lack of credit, and educational and economic opportunities aren’t a problem limited to this small town. “Ferguson is not an island,” he said.

Local officials note that some banks have been developing new loan and credit products to those who have poor credit histories. “They aren’t plentiful, and they aren’t a magical elixir,” Krehmeyer notes.

Residents still see “liquidity challenges from paycheck to paycheck,” he said.

That’s made West Florissant Avenue a great location for purveyors of short-term, high-interest-rate loans. It’s also made the area a place where people can feel rejected, less rooted and trapped and, in some cases, exploited.