RBI To Introduce DIGITA To Stop Illegal Money Lending Apps – News18

There has been a significant increase in illegal loan-giving applications in the country. This has further led to an increase in cyber fraud as well, resulting many people in losing out on their hard-earned money as they fell prey to such scams. To tackle this situation, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has increased scrutiny and is gearing up to curb the increasing cases of cyber fraud. It is considering setting up a Digital India Trust Agency, ie, DIGITA in India.

DIGITA will be responsible for stopping illegal lending apps from popping up. The proposed agency will enable the verification of these digital lending apps and will maintain a public register of these verified applications. Any app which will not carry the “verified” tag of DIGITA, will be considered unauthorised. This will create an important and much-needed checkpoint in the fight against online financial fraud.

As per reports, DIGITA will also be responsible for investigating these loan lending applications. The verification process will create more transparency and accountability within the digital sector and make online payments secure. Once the proposed agency is in place, it may be able to stop all the fraud and malpractices in recent times.

RBI has shared a list of about 442 unique digital lending applications with the Information Technology (IT) Ministry to consider trustworthy with Google. Meanwhile, the US tech giant removed about 2,200 digital lending apps (DLAs) from the app store from September 2022 to August 2023.

Google also made some important changes to its policies. It has updated the policy regarding the enforcement of loan apps on Play Store and only those apps which have partnered with RBI Regulated Entities (REs) or those published by the REs will be allowed. This much-needed policy change happened after the RBI and the Department of Financial Services (DFS) under the Finance Ministry made a request.