Can RBI curb India’s fake loan app crisis?

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Editor's note: Ashwin here. Last week, just a few days before Reserve Bank of India governor Shaktikanta Das indicated that the central bank would issue guidelines to regulate digital lending soon, I got an intriguing message from an anonymous Twitter account. “Loan app RupeeWay… Do you have any details on them? Because I have been harassed and threatened every day,” it read. I replied immediately asking for details, but got no response. As a reporter, receiving such distress messages is not uncommon. For the last two years, I have been consistently reporting on the perils of unsupervised digital lending in India. I know exactly the nature of intimidation techniques adopted by some digital lenders. Here’s how it works. An app, through permissions acquired cunningly, gets access to a borrower’s photo gallery, contacts list, social media accounts and so on. This access is then used to dox, threaten and even blackmail borrowers who default on loan repayment. Many such instances have reportedly led to the distressed borrowers dying of suicide. We have written about some of the entities involved in such frauds and …