MeitY examines loan application verification process at RBI, Ministry of Finance: Rajeev Chandrasekhar

These statements come at a time when the government has blocked more than 138 betting apps and 94 lending apps for alleged links to China.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) wants to establish a monitoring process to prevent the proliferation of harmful loan apps on Google or Apple app stores, said Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar at the inaugural edition of Moneycontrol India’s Fintech magazine. Conclave (IFC) in Mumbai.

Chandrasekhar said the ministry would meet the Reserve Bank of India and the Finance Ministry to discuss the matter.

“Recently we’ve seen loan applications. I think there needs to be something around it and we’re going to have a discussion with the RBI and the Finance Ministry about that and we think there should be some threshold, some kind of control. I don’t want to call it licensing, but certainly some kind of gating, before the apps are available online in the Google or Apple Play stores,” said Chandrasekhar.

These statements came at a time when the government, on the instructions of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), blocked more than 138 betting apps and 94 lending apps, including Kissht, LazyPay and Ola Avail Finance, for alleged links to China. . Kissh, LazyPay, Buddy Loan, Faircent and CashTM were later unbanned.

In an earlier interview MoneycontrolChandrasekhar said the lending apps were blocked based on decisions made through the prism of user harm, security and national sovereignty relations, and were evaluated by various ministries.

“Politics is not China-centric”

“The Indian government has no policy that is China-centric. No Chinese company is banned from investing in India. Apps are not removed because they are from China,” Chandrasekhar said.

He explained that the apps were removed because they violated Indian laws and regulations. “Our approach to China or Chinese companies is not because they are Chinese, but because they have been busy breaking every known law on the planet when it comes to loans,” Chandrasekhar said.

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“For some of the mobile phone companies investigated, it was because they were diligently exporting data to unknown IP addresses from India,” he explained.

Crossroads challenge

Asked about the dilemma facing fintech entrepreneurs with the possibility of regulation by the IT ministry and the RBI, Chandrasekhar admitted that there are difficulties in intersections like fintech.

“Certainly there are challenges in many areas that intersect with being on the Internet and being in a particular sector. So there is a sectoral regulation that comes into action, in this case the RBI, and the Ministry of Internet Governance, which is us,” Chandrasekhar said.

“I agree that we need to figure out a better way of working within government, with regulators and departments, and not let the chaos affect entrepreneurs. We need to get better and we are working on that,” he said. .

Dominance in fintech

To another question on Big Tech’s dominance in the payments ecosystem, Chandrasekhar said the government is aware of the situation and said it needs to figure out ways to ensure that dominance does not affect consumers’ rights, experience of choice. and access to products.

“If we see that a certain market share is coming in the way of free and fair choice for consumers, then we will certainly take action. Today, the CCI (Competition Commission of India) is doing its work, but no one should be of this opinion. , a certain market share means they can play fast and loose,” he said.