This year is the last hurrah for the refund anticipation loan, a tax-season staple that consumer groups love to hate.

Bank regulators forced a couple of big banks to abandon the product after the 2010 tax season, including the one that once made 2 million loans a year through H&R Block offices. The last small bank still making the loans, Republic Bank & Trust of Louisville, Ky., has agreed to stop doing so after April. The banking industry, then, will be completely out of a business that once generated more than $700 million a year in fees.

Consumer advocates campaigned long and hard against the loans, saying low-income people were being suckered into paying high fees. Jackson Hewitt Tax Service, one of Republic Bank's remaining partners, is charging $61.22 for a $1,500 loan that generally lasts one or two weeks. That amounts to 149 percent annual interest.

While the consumer groups are happy to see that product go away, they're worried about what might take its place. "Unfortunately, no victory is ever complete," said Chi Chi Wu, a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center. "It's the whack-a-mole principle."

Lightly regulated payday lenders may step into the vacuum with even costlier, riskier loans.

Wu also is wary of an alternative product that tax preparers call a refund-anticipation check. It sets up a temporary bank account where the Internal Revenue Service deposits the refund, and the taxpayer withdraws money either as a check or a prepaid card.

H&R Block has been promoting a free prepaid card as a way to get your refund, but other preparers collect $30 or more for the new refund-anticipation products. Even the free card isn't always free; as with other cards, you may pay a couple of dollars to withdraw money at certain ATMs.

And here's the rub: Paying a fee doesn't put money in your hands any faster. The IRS promises these days to get a refund into your bank account in 8 to 15 days, and these "anticipation" checks don't speed that up.

They appeal mainly to two groups of people: Those who don't have a bank account, and those who can't scrape up enough money to pay their tax preparer. If you sign up for a refund-anticipation check, the firm will take its fee out of your refund.

This does more for the tax preparer than for the taxpayer. "You're borrowing the amount of the tax preparation fee," Wu says. "If you're paying $30 to borrow $200 or $300, that again is a very expensive loan."

Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com, says consumers don't seem to realize how fast they can get their money directly from the government. "The IRS has really accelerated the turnaround time on direct deposit refunds," he said. "You're not waiting 8 weeks for a check in the mail like you did 10 or 20 years ago."

The IRS experimented last year with sending prepaid cards for people who didn't have bank accounts. It tested both a free card and one with a $4.95 monthly fee. The Treasury is evaluating the results and hasn't decided whether to make the cards widely available.

A cheap, well-publicized Uncle Sam card might finally put a stop to the refund-anticipation marketing machine. For now, consumer advocates can celebrate the fact that they've slowed it down a little.