Ashneer Grover condemns RBI’s digital guidelines

Ashneer Grover has slammed RBI’s digital lending guidelines and called it one of the worst in the world for discouraging fintech firms from lending.

The former BharatPe founder and Shark Tank India judge tweeted: “If UPI is the best tech/regulatory innovation in the world, the RBI’s digital lending guidelines have to be the worst. Essentially RBI is telling Fintechs: Don’t do digital lending, banks are not capable enough to do it, we also don’t understand it, and the sale of pens and papers will also decline.

Grover had earlier called RBI’s decision to allow credit cards to be linked with the UPI a great move, but he had his reservations regarding merchant discount rate. However, most netizens disagreed with Grover’s statement, citing the guidelines as crucial as they faced harassment from different fintech firms.

One user tweeted: “You should also try to listen to cries of thousands of people who either committed suicide or got into depression due to harassment by digital lenders.” Another user tweeted: “Understand your sentiments but recent pathetic practices by Ola and Paytm left no choice! It's a right step. You shouldn't make a business by fooling customers.”

One Twitter user wrote, “Sahi hai boss... In the name of Digital Lending, charging 52% Interest and saying fintech company is doing Innovation? This is not Innovative... These things need to be stopped. Fintech app is the modern version of Shahukar.”