How illegal lending apps continue to slip into Google and Apple’s app stores

For the better part of the past two years, stories about predatory digital lending applications (DLAs) have dotted the pages of India’s newspapers. Their exorbitant interest rates and heavyhanded—if not outright illegal—collection practices have caused untold misery across the length and breadth of the country.

During the last three months alone, there have been multiple reports of victims being driven to take their own lives due to the underhanded practices of these operations. In one instance earlier this month, a construction worker and his family in Kerala died by suicide after being harassed by the collection agents of an illegal DLA. With these agents resorting to all forms of harassment—from incessant calls and messages to threats of physical harm and even circulating morphed pictures of borrowers—such harrowing outcomes are hardly isolated incidents.

The government has not turned a blind eye to the scourge of predatory DLAs. However, despite multiple crackdowns and growing regulatory intervention from government bodies, including the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), and state-level cybercrime cells, these DLAs continue to slip into the app stores of Apple and Google.