MeitY to explore verification process for loan apps with RBI

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) expresses a wish to establish a verification process to prevent the proliferation of harmful loan apps in Google or Apple app stores, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said during an event in Mumbai. Chandrasekhar said that the ministry will meet with the Reserve Bank of India and the Ministry of Finance to discuss this matter.

"We have recently seen loan apps. I think there has to be something around it and we are going to have a discussion with RBI and the Ministry of Finance on this where we think there should be some threshold, some sort of verification -- I don't want to call it licensing, but certainly some sort of gating before apps can come online to Google or Apple play stores," Chandrasekhar said.

These statements come at a time when, based on the directions of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), the government blocked over 138 betting apps and 94 lending apps, including Kissht, LazyPay, and Ola Avail Finance, for alleged Chinese connections. Later, the ban on Kissht, LazyPay, Buddy Loan, Faircent, and CashTM was lifted.