The Indian government recently shocked the fintech industry by banning 230 betting and loan lending apps with alleged Chinese links earlier this week. Since the ban, there has been an update from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. Reports suggest certain popular, and possibly Indian-origin loan apps, have now had their ban revoked. Some of the biggest names on this list include PayU-owned LazyPay and Kissht, apart from others from IndiaBulls and Faircent.
According to an Economic Times report, LazyPay, Kissht, indiabullshomeloans.com, buddyloan.com, faircent.com and Aptoide versions of platforms such as KreditBee and mPokket have had their bans revoked within days of the initial ruling. This comes as a relief to the millions of customers of widely popular apps like LazyPay; the ban on the Indian lending app had caused a stir on social media. Economic Times confirmed independently that major ISPs had unblocked these apps and websites. More such apps, with no alleged links to China, will also be unblocked in the coming days, as per the report.
“MeitY has received documents from several platforms over the last few days and has been scrutinising the submissions to ascertain whether the ban was necessary or not. We have concluded that some of these platforms need not be blocked and, therefore, some ban orders are being revoked,” a government official told Economic Times.
Kissht founder Ranvir Singh suggests the compliant nature of these apps is the reason behind the revoking of the blanket ban this week. “The government has shown unrelenting support in ensuring that credible and fully compliant apps such as Kissht continue to work towards greater financial inclusivity in the country,” Singh was quoted as saying.
To recall, a total of 138 betting apps and 94 loan lending apps were banned by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, based on the recommendations of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). This ‘urgent’ ban was made under Section 69 of the IT Act, in the aftermath of several complaints of harassment of common people becoming rampant online.
It has been reported previously that certain Chinese nationals were deceiving Indians by luring them in to take small loans through apps that charged up to 3000 percent interest. on non-repayment, these miscreants would then send lewd messages and inappropriate images to contacts in the victim’s phone. Action from the Indian government was taken after several reports of suicides in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
