Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman chairs meeting on illegal loan apps

New Delhi, Sept 9 (KNN) Union Minister for Finance & Corporate Affairs Nirmala Sitharaman chaired a meeting on issues related to ‘Illegal Loan Apps’ outside the regular banking channels on September 8.

She expressed her concern on the increasing instances of illegal loan apps offering loans/micro credits, especially to vulnerable & low-income group people at exorbitantly high interest rates and processing/hidden charges, and predatory recovery practices involving blackmailing, criminal intimidation etc.

The meeting was attended by the Finance Secretary, Ministry of Finance; Secretary, Economic Affairs; Secretary, Revenue, & Corporate Affairs (Addl. Charge); Secretary, Financial Services; Secretary, Electronics & Information technology; Deputy Governor, RBI; and Executive Director, RBI.

The meeting also discussed the possibility of money laundering, tax evasions, breach of data, and misuse of unregulated payment aggregators, shell companies, defunct NBFCs etc. for perpetrating such actions.

It was decided in the meeting that RBI will prepare a “Whitelist” of all the legal Apps and MeitY will ensure that only these “Whitelist” apps are hosted on app stores.

RBI will also monitor the ‘mule/rented’ accounts that may be used for money laundering and to review or cancel dormant NBFCs to avoid their misuse. It will ensure that registration of payment aggregators be completed within a timeframe and no un-registered payment aggregator be allowed to function after that.

To further prevent the misuse, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs will identify shell companies and de-register them.

The Ministry of Finance will monitor the actionable points for compliance on a regular basis.  (KNN Bureau)