Apple has removed several predatory lending apps from its App Store in India this week, days after media and app store shoppers questioned the legitimacy of those services.
Pocket Kash, White Kash, Golden Kash, and OK Rupee are among the apps that Apple pulled from the store this week. The apps offered fast-track lending to consumers in India, climbing to the top 20 of the finance list on the App Store in recent weeks. But they also levied outrageously superfluous charges, according to hundreds of user reviews.
The lenders also employed downright unethical tactics to get the borrowers to pay back.
“I borrowed an amount in a helpless situation and […] a day before repayment due date I got some messages with my pic and my contacts in my phone saying that repay your loan otherwise they will inform our contacts that your not paying loan,” a user review from last month said.
The apps — whose developers had strange names and suspicious websites — were littered with hundreds of similar reviews, some sharing even more alarming threats that they allegedly received from the lenders.
Wtf is this, a personal loan app called Kash is threatening to send morphed nude photos of their customer to her entire contact list?! pic.twitter.com/5LcsukVgef
— Sandhya Ramesh (@sandygrains) July 3, 2023
MacDailyNews Take: Obviously, these apps do not adhere to Apple’s App Store rules and, thankfully, Apple has quickly removed them. How responsive would some third-party app store be?
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[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Predatory lenders should be banned. Period.
This is Apples fault for allowing such apps in the first place and for not having enough safeguards in place to vet the owners submitting apps
Apple needs to do more than just pass apps and bury their head in the sand.
Owners of nefarious apps involving criminal activities should be reported to the local law enforcement not just have their app taken down.
You need to ban those apps in México too. It’s extortion, not lending.