PawnSmarts comes pre-configured for Texas — it loads the current OCCC rate chart, enforces the one-month maturity and 30-day grace period, prints the "last day of grace" on every ticket, and tracks the 20-day hold on purchases, all from $89/month.
Texas pawnbrokers are governed by the Texas Pawnshop Act (Texas Finance Code, Chapter 371) and the Finance Commission's rules at 7 Texas Administrative Code, Chapter 85, Subchapter A. The Office of Consumer Credit Commissioner licenses and examines every pawnshop in the state, and publishes a new pawn rate chart each July 1. Texas pawn shop software is a point-of-sale and management system that applies the graduated pawn service charge, prints a compliant Chapter 371 pawn ticket, tracks the grace period and hold periods, and produces the transaction file your local law enforcement agency asks for. PawnSmarts ships with the Texas rules already loaded — from Houston, Dallas and San Antonio to Fort Worth, Austin, El Paso and the Valley — so you can write a pawn in about 30 seconds, scan a license to auto-fill the pledgor, and let the software handle the brackets, the dates and the paperwork.
Plenty of pawn software vendors price the program low and then make their money on "support" — $200 to $350 a month, every month, whether you use it or not. PawnSmarts doesn't work that way. You pay $89/month for the Essential plan or $129/month for Professional — month to month, no contract, no setup fee, cancel anytime. Prefer to own it outright? Professional is also a $2,995 one-time purchase. And if you run your card processing through us, the software can be free.
Texas is one of the most uniform pawn states in the country. Finance Code § 371.005 gives the Legislature exclusive authority over the operation of pawnshops, so licensing, rates, loan terms, ticket contents and record retention are the same in every county. What does change from store to store is the hold period on purchases and a handful of county-population rules — both covered below.
You need a pawnshop license from the OCCC before you open, and a separate license for each location (§ 371.051, § 371.068). Applicants must maintain net assets of at least $150,000 that are used or readily available in the business of each pawnshop (§ 371.072). The commissioner may require a bond of up to $5,000 per license (§ 371.056). The new-license investigation fee is $500, and the annual assessment is a fixed fee of up to $625 plus a volume fee, capped at $1,200 per active license (7 TAC § 85.211). The license year runs July 1 to June 30; annual fees are due by May 31 and the renewal window is June 1–30 (7 TAC § 85.104).
Pawn employee licensing has been optional since September 1, 2019 (§ 371.101, as amended by H.B. 1442) — but it is all or nothing. If your shop opts in, every employee who writes pawn transactions, buys or sells merchandise, or supervises those employees must be licensed, and a new hire must apply within 75 days. You can only change your opt-in status during the June renewal window.
Texas caps the pawn service charge on a graduated monthly schedule tied to the amount financed (§ 371.159), and the brackets are re-indexed to the CPI every year. The revised chart takes effect July 1 (Finance Code § 341.202). Here is the chart in effect for July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027:
| Amount financed — maximum monthly rate | PawnSmarts |
|---|---|
| $0.01 – $276.00 — 20% per month | Applied automatically |
| $276.01 – $1,840.00 — 15% per month | Applied automatically |
| $1,840.01 – $2,760.00 — 2.5% per month | Applied automatically |
| $2,760.01 – $23,000.00 — 1% per month | Applied automatically |
| Maximum amount financed: $23,000 | Enforced |
Two more rate rules the software enforces for you. Splitting is prohibited — you may not divide a transaction to collect more than a single combined amount financed would allow (§ 371.156), and items usually sold as a set must be written on one ticket. And on early redemption, any pawn service charge above $15 is reduced by one-thirtieth of the total charge for each day between redemption and the original maturity date (§ 371.161) — so $15 is an effective non-refundable floor.
Personal property purchased from the public must be held at the licensed location for at least 20 days from the purchase date before it is modified, sold or disposed of (7 TAC § 85.420). There are exactly two lawful ways to go shorter: a local ordinance that specifies a shorter hold period, or a written agreement with local law enforcement for seven days or less — and that agreement is conditioned on exchanging pawn and purchase ticket information electronically, and must be submitted to the commissioner through the chief local law enforcement officer.
PawnSmarts makes the hold period a per-location setting, because a two-store operator can legitimately be running 20 days at one address and seven at another.
Texas accepts six forms of ID for pledgors and sellers (§ 371.174): a state driver's license, a state ID card, a passport, a military ID, a Mexican Consulate certificado de matrícula consular, or ID issued by the federal citizenship and immigration agency. By rule the ID is acceptable if it is current or has not been expired for more than one year, and a Texas handgun license is acceptable and is recorded on the front of the ticket as, for example, "TX HL #12345678." Four kinds of ID are prohibited: a foreign driver's license, a state ID card issued by anything other than DPS or a comparable out-of-state agency, an inmate or parolee card, and a Social Security card (7 TAC § 85.405). Photographing the pledgor is not required in Texas.
The pawn ticket must carry all ten items in § 371.157 — including the pledgor's physical description, an identification and description of the goods with serial numbers where reasonably available, and the Regulation Z labels "Amount Financed," "Finance Charge," "Total of Payments" and "Annual Percentage Rate." The rules add several system-level requirements: characters sufficient to identify the employee writing the ticket and handling each renewal or redemption, sequential numbering generated by the automated system, a pledgor signature line, a unique label for each pledged item, and an alphabetical lookup by pledgor name for lost or destroyed tickets.
Descriptions have to be specific (7 TAC § 85.405): every reasonably available serial number, VIN or hull number, plus any visible owner-applied number or identifying mark. Firearms need caliber and type. Jewelry needs weight, metal type including purity, style, stones, and the gender the piece was made for, with stones described by type, color, shape, number, size and approximate weight — and class rings need the school name and class year. Motor vehicles need year, model, body style, plate number and state of registration.
Making the data available is mandatory; the channel is not. Under 7 TAC § 85.406 the information on the pawn ticket must be made available to the law enforcement agency electronically or by producing a separate copy of the ticket, and electronic reporting itself is voluntary and negotiated locally. The rule's suggested guidelines are specific: comma-delimited ASCII text with field titles as the first record, batches no smaller than daily activity, all purchases and pawns in a single transmission, and no direct access to your computer system by the agency. There is no statewide Texas portal and no state mandate to use any named vendor — but electronic exchange is the gateway to the seven-day hold, so most shops want it.
Books and records must be preserved at least until the second anniversary of the last transaction recorded (§ 371.152), and by rule for two years from the date of the last recorded event — the date an item is taken into inventory, redeemed, renewed, seized or voided (7 TAC § 85.402). Records must be good enough that any single transaction, or any set of them, can be re-created. Each location also keeps a compliance file holding OCCC correspondence, the last three examination reports and two years of compliance correspondence.
Texas law enforcement may place a hold order on property (7 TAC § 85.419). The suggested guidelines put the term at no more than 60 days, extendable in 30-day increments by written notice, with holds and extensions automatically terminating on expiration. A hold order should identify the officer, the case number, a complete description of the property including the related ticket number, and an expiration date.
You may not take a pledge or buy property from anyone under 18, or from a person you believe is under the influence of alcohol or drugs (§ 371.176). An item whose serial number has obviously been defaced, altered or removed may not be taken into pawn (7 TAC § 85.418), and every shop must keep a written stolen-goods policy that each employee signs, with the signed acknowledgments in the compliance file. Shops must be open at least four hours a day, five days a week, and may not do business before 7 a.m. or after 9 p.m. (§ 371.151). And § 371.179 forbids displaying a pistol, dirk, dagger, blackjack, sword cane, metal knuckles or a switchblade in a storefront window or sidewalk case, or depicting one on a sign viewable from the street.
In a Texas county with a population of 250,000 or more, a new license requires the proposed location to be more than two miles from an existing licensed pawnshop, and a relocation must land more than one mile away — measured front door to front door (§ 371.059). A shop that has operated at its current address for at least three years gets an alternative path. Twenty-one counties currently meet the threshold, including Harris, Dallas, Bexar, Tarrant, Travis, El Paso, Collin, Denton, Fort Bend, Hidalgo, Nueces, Lubbock, Cameron, Webb, McLennan, Bell, Jefferson, Montgomery, Brazoria, Galveston and Williamson.
If you lend to active-duty service members or their dependents, the federal Military Lending Act caps the Military APR at 36% and requires you to verify covered-borrower status through the DoD's MLA database. Texas rules expressly permit the prescribed pawn ticket to be modified to carry the MLA disclosure — note that any other change to the ticket form requires the commissioner's advance written approval. PawnSmarts flags covered borrowers and keeps the loan within the federal cap.
The OCCC's Pawn Industry Consolidated Volume Report for calendar year 2024 counts 1,338 companies reporting, which together made 5,281,065 loans totaling $1,154,097,418 — an average loan of $219. At year end there were 1,417,901 loans outstanding worth $365,559,046. Texas is one of the largest and most closely measured pawn markets in the country, and PawnSmarts is built and supported from Dallas.
The OCCC rate brackets, the one-month maturity, the printed "last day of grace" date, the 20-day purchase hold and the required ticket fields are already built in.
Transactions export as comma-delimited text with field titles on the first record — the format the OCCC's own rule suggests — batched daily, pawns and purchases together.
On Professional, pledgors get three reminders before maturity and can pay from home — fewer forfeitures, more redemptions.
We migrate your data for you for a one-time $395, and PawnSmarts works offline and auto-syncs so you're never down.
Texas caps the pawn service charge on a graduated monthly schedule tied to the amount financed, and the brackets are re-indexed every year, taking effect July 1. For July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027 the maximums are 20% per month up to $276.00, 15% per month from $276.01 to $1,840.00, 2.5% per month from $1,840.01 to $2,760.00, and 1% per month from $2,760.01 to $23,000.00. The maximum amount that may be financed is $23,000.
A Texas pawn cannot mature more than one month after the transaction date, and the pawnbroker must then hold the pledged goods for at least 30 days after maturity. During that grace period the pledgor pays the original redemption amount plus one-thirtieth of the original monthly service charge for each day, including the day of redemption. Goods not redeemed by the 30th day may be forfeited on the 31st day at the pawnbroker's option.
At least 20 days from the purchase date, at the licensed location, before the item is modified, sold or disposed of. There are only two ways to go shorter: a local ordinance that specifies a shorter hold period, or a written agreement with local law enforcement for seven days or less, which requires that pawn and purchase ticket information be exchanged electronically and must be submitted to the commissioner through the chief local law enforcement officer.
Not necessarily. Pawn employee licensing has been optional since September 1, 2019. But it is all or nothing: if a shop opts into the program, every employee who writes pawn transactions, buys or sells merchandise, or supervises those employees must hold a license, and a new hire has 75 days to apply. Opt-in status can only be changed during the June renewal window.
Under 7 TAC section 85.402(d) a Texas licensee must use a reviewed software system unless it uses a compliant manual system or a proprietary system that is not sold or distributed to other licensees. The OCCC maintains the list of reviewed non-proprietary systems, and the rule places responsibility on the pawnbroker to confirm that a system was reviewed before it is used. Call PawnSmarts at 800-710-6184 before switching and we will walk you through the details.
Pawn shop software for Texas generally ranges from about $89 per month to $350 or more per month, depending on the vendor and whether support is bundled. PawnSmarts is $89/month for Essential or $129/month for Professional, month to month, no contract, no setup fee, or $2,995 as a one-time purchase, and it can be free with integrated card processing. Every plan ships with the current OCCC rate chart, the one-month maturity and 30-day grace period, and the 20-day purchase hold already configured.
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Questions? [email protected] · 800-710-6184