The United States Department of Education has announced two regulations aimed at protecting students from unreasonable fees and expanding income-based repayment plans.

The changes include revisions to Pay As You Earn, an income-based repayment program plan. The revisions allow more borrowers to limit the amount of their payments to 10 percent of their income, according to an education department press release. The new plan, called REPAYE, will become available in December.

The move also comes after President Barack Obama issued a presidential memorandum in June 2014 telling the Department of Education to propose new regulations to help “ease the burden of student loan debt.” The new regulations will allow five million more direct loan borrowers to cap their monthly student loan payment amount at 10 percent of their annual income allocated per month, without regard to when the borrower first obtained their loans, according to the release.

Besides the repayment plan changes, the revisions aim to help protect students from unfair campus banking card practices. Students will be able to freely choose how to receive their federal student aid refunds and will no longer “be forced to pay excessive fees to access their Federal student aid, including Pell Grants,” according to the release.

The new regulations will also provide the following, according to the release:

• Require institutions to give students greater choice about how to receive their student aid.
• Prohibit institutions from requiring students or parents to open a certain account into which their student aid refunds are deposited.
• Require institutions to ensure that students are not charged excessive and confusing fees (e.g., overdraft fees and transaction-swipe fees) if a student selects an account offered directly or indirectly by contractors that assist institutions in making direct payments of federal student aid.
• Require an institution to provide students with a list of account options that the student may choose from to receive their student aid refunds, where each option is presented in a neutral manner and makes clear that the student can have their student aid deposited to their preexisting bank account.
• Require institutions to ensure that electronic payments made to a student’s preexisting account are made as timely as, and no more onerous to the student than, payments made to accounts marketed through the institution.
• Allow institutions to share limited student information with third-party servicers that offer financial products to allow the continued functioning of disbursement processes, while also protecting private student information, such as Social Security numbers or portions thereof.

“These regulations will help make sure student loan debt is affordable for all borrowers and bring overdue reforms to campus cards, a sector that too often puts taxpayer dollars and student consumers at risk,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in the release.