Many digital betting and lending apps that were being operational in India on Wednesday issued clarifications after the Centre banned nearly 138 gambling apps and 94 loan apps over “Chinese linkage” concerns.
One such platform, market, said that the domain in the list issued by MeiTY is a clear instance of “impersonation” and has no affiliation to mPokket whatsoever.
“Aptoide is a third-party app store with which we have no official or unofficial partnership. We suspect that it may be a proxy app on Aptoide and we are looking into it further. Blocking such apps protects both the consumers and lenders. We at mPokket continue to bring the best service to our customers without any disruptions,”
Some popular loan apps such as PayU’s buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) service LazyPay, Kissht, RupeeRedee, and Faircent were also seen as part of a ‘partial’ ban list that was being floated around.
Sunny Mittal, VP-Compliance at RupeeRedee, said they haven’t received any official information from Google or government sources on banning the dubious version of the app said in a statement that:
“Having said that, we have no formal or informal partnership with Aptoide which is a third-party Android app store. We are speculating that it’s a proxy app on Aptoide. Blocking of the Aptoide link is a favorable outcome for us, as our official website and Google Play Store is the primary source of trusted customer base,”
“There is a dubious app on Aptoide, which seems to have been blocked. We have received no communication from Google so far,”
Following complaints against Chinese loan and betting apps, the IT Ministry began the process of banning 138 betting apps and 94 lending apps that had Chinese links, on the instructions of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) was recently instructed by the MHA to ban such apps, which operate through a third-party link.
Sources said that all these apps were found to violate Section 69 of the IT Act and contained materials that were deemed as threat to India’s sovereignty and integrity.
As per sources, these apps are used to trap financially strapped people in a debt trap, by increasing their interest on loans by up to 3,000 percent. The issue came to the fore after several cases of suicides by borrowers of these apps were reported from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
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