Pocket Kash, White Kash, Golden Kash and OK Rupee are among the predatory loan apps that Apple has purged from its app store in India. This move from Apple comes over a month after Google removed lending apps which were allegedly using unethical ways of recovery.
In September 2022, Nirmala Sitharaman, Union Finance Minister, had asked the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to prepare a white list of digital lending apps to stamp out those using unethical means to exploit vulnerable customers. In a statement, the Finance Ministry said that RBI and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) will ensure that only approved loan apps are available for download in Indian app stores.
“The finance minister expressed concern about increasing instances of illegal loan apps offering loans/micro credits, especially to vulnerable and low-income group people at exorbitantly high interest rates and processing/hidden charges, and predatory recovery practices involving blackmailing and criminal intimidation,” the statement from Finance Ministry said.
In April 2023, Sitharaman informed that the Finance Ministry was working with MeitY and RBI to block ponzi apps and prevent the unscrupulous promoters of such apps from taking away the hard-earned money of unsuspecting consumers. She urged investors to do their due diligence and not be lured by false promises of windfall gains made by the ponzi apps.
“There are apps which are luring people with false promises. We can do this; we can do that. Your money will fetch you this much. Many of them are ponzi apps. We are working with MeitY and RBI to clamp down on them like never before. We won’t allow these ponzi apps to take away the hard-earned money of investors and consumers,” she said.
Some of the apps that Apple has purged from its App store were among the top 20 apps in the finance list. These apps were scamming customers with superfluous charges and using unethical methods of recovery. Hundreds of users have posted their complaints. One complainant had said that a loan app was threatening to send her morphed nude pictures to her entire contact list.
The fast growing fintech ecosystem and the rising popularity of smartphones in India has directly contributed to the rise of ponzi and predatory apps. In a statement, Apple said, “The App Store, and our App Review Guidelines, are designed to ensure we are providing the safest experience possible to our users. We do not tolerate fraudulent activity on the App Store, and have stringent rules against apps and developers who attempt to cheat the system.”
According to the iPhone maker, the Apple App Store has blocked over $2 billion in fraudulent transactions in 2022, and rejected nearly 1.7 million app submissions for failing to meet the company’s standards of quality and safety.
The smartphone ecosystem in India is dominated by Google’s Android, which holds 95.6% of the mobile OS market. Apple’s share is less than 4%. The primary hub of predatory and ponzi apps in the country is Google Play store. In 2022, Google purged more than 2000 fraudulent apps from its app store, following interventions from the Finance Ministry, MeitY and RBI. The search giant has removed hundreds of fraudulent apps in 2023 as well.
