I'm not going to get into another EMD debate, if it's working for you keep doing it although there are several arguments to both of the above points.
Firstly, yes, an EMD can rank just as well as a non-EMD although they are said to come under more scrutiny. Values have dropped on the vast majority of EMD's as what made them valuable in the first place was the ability to simply rank with little effort. If you take that away, it's only the real ultra-premium EMD's that have value and even those are worth nowhere near as much as they were pre April-2012 (Penguin).
The argument of well the keyword is my brand name is invalid. Firstly, Googles billion dollar algorithm is quite capable of detecting what is a keyword and what is a legitimate brand name. Brand signals i.e. mentions of your brand around the web plus people actually searching for your brand on Google are HUGE factors in determining ranking, significantly more than the domain itself. If you have a keyword domain, short of people actually searching for your full domain or your full domain being mentioned, you lose both of these metrics.
I've been building sites on old EMD's and non-EMD's since the aforementioned update in April 2012 and overall it's my non-EMD's that get more traffic. In terms of link building, if you wanted to rank for KEYWORD ONE, you can get away with a lot more links to your non-EMD than matching your keyword links to your keyword brand. Given that the domain bonus is minimal these days and you do still need links to rank, personally, when all things considered (including outright domain costs) I'm opting for the unique brand over EMD.
Regarding the Payday niche, there have been "Payday Loan" updates for the past couple of years. It's nothing new. You don't see EMD's ranking in the payday niche anymore but on any given day there are a number of spam sites in the top 10. The update was a bit of a joke.