Crackdown on illegal loan apps: RBI to make 'whitelist' of legal platforms
In a crackdown on illegal digital lending platforms, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will soon prepare a ‘whitelist’ of all legal applications (apps) that offer loans, and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) will ensure only these apps are hosted on app stores. “The RBI will monitor the ‘mule/rented’ accounts that may be used for money laundering and review or cancel dormant NBFCs (non-banking financial companies) to avoid their misuse. The RBI will ensure that registration of payment aggregators be completed within a timeframe and no unregistered payment aggregator be allowed to function after that,” the finance ministry said in a statement on Friday. The decisions were taken in a meeting chaired by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday. The steps by the government come after illegal loan apps hosted on app stores have been found offering micro-credit to the pandemic-hit people and low-income g...