The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) recently banned 94 mobile apps with links to China. This affected digital lending platforms LazyPay and Kissht, causing some customers to lose access.
After an order from the IT Ministry on February 5, the websites of LazyPay, owned by PayU, and loan provider Kissht were unavailable on major telecom networks.
Kissht’s founder, Ranvir Singh, said that the app and website are still working for customers, although he did notice a Play Store notification about Kissht. A company spokesperson added that “Kissht has no Chinese stakeholders.” PayU is owned by the South African company Naspers.
Many LazyPay and Kissht users who couldn’t pay their bills because of the outages expressed their frustration on Twitter. One user said, “I owe Rs 1867 but can’t open my Lazypay app or website. I’m trying to pay through SMS links, but nothing is working. How am I supposed to pay?”
The Indian government has been tightening its control over digital lending platforms, especially those with Chinese connections, due to illegal recovery practices. This has led regulators to create policies to protect Indian borrowers. Recently, the RBI advised state governments to use their law enforcement agencies to monitor unlicensed digital lending platforms and apps.
Most short term loan apps including the Indian ones deploy harsh measures — such as calling borrower’s family and friends in case of default. This has resulted into extreme steps in some cases where the borrowers resorted to suicide. “The government seems to have taken note of these hard tactics and banned Kishht and LazyPay,” said another industry source who also requested not to be named.
Keep visiting The Ganga Times for such beautiful articles. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Koo for regular updates.