The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission has stated that it will remove any loan applications that harass users and asked Google to remove such applications from its app store.
This was in response to the ongoing harassment and defamation meted out by these digital lenders to Nigerians.
The FCCPC required loan applications to register with it at the beginning of the year. 180 applications have so far received the commission’s full or conditional license to operate in the country.
Additionally, Google recently declared that without regulatory approval, loan apps would not be accepted to its app store.
Despite the fact that Google said in April that starting on May 31, 2023, loan applications on the Play Store would no longer be able to access users’ contacts or photographs, lending apps had kept bugging users.
The FCCPC’s chief executive, Babatunde Irukera, stated that the commission was prepared to permanently halt the operations of these apps.
“We have read the stories, but in order to confirm that the evidence is real, we must conduct an investigation.
“The result of this, and they are aware of it, is that they will be delisted and we will ask Google to permanently remove any future defamatory statements or harassment.”
He however stated that they can’t proceed in that manner without being certain because they have found that the loan apps doing these things are not on Google.
“Most of the complaints we’ve received about these things show that the companies are not on our list/Google,” the speaker said.
“They are the ones engaging customers through WhatsApp, APK, and other subtle, secret means.”
Irukera urged customers to only take loans from sanctioned loan applications because they were simpler to identify and sanction.
