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The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) announced that it is delisting two digital money lenders (DMLs) for unethical practices such as duplicity and the use of Android Package Kits (APKs) file formats.
The Executive Vice Chairman of FCCPC, Mr Babatunde Irukera said in a statement on the Commission’s official Twitter handle on Friday, that it had also set deadline for all DMLs to comply with its regulations.
“The illegal DMLs provide links to consumers to visit unregistered websites using Android devices,” Babatunde Irukera, CEO of FCCPC said in a statement seen by Bendada.com. “In the course of the Commission’s continuing investigations and tracking of these illegally operating DMLs, [we] have discovered duplicity by at least two otherwise legally registered DMLs on the Commission’s approval list.”
Mr. Irukera further explained the duplicity is executed such that approved digital lenders use these alternate channels for prohibited conduct. In the statement, the FCCPC said it has identified Sycamore Integrated Solutions Limited and Orange Loan & Purple Credit Limited as the erring companies and has since announced that they are permanently delisted as approved digital lenders in the country.
In addition, FCCPC said that it has asked Google Playstore to prohibit any product associated with the aforementioned companies which occupy numbers one and 65 on the recent list of approved companies and digital money lending apps in Nigeria that was released by the commission last month.
However, there seems to be confusion and a lack of adequate communication. According to a spokesperson at Sycamore, “an app impersonated us and they [referring to FCCPC] did not even check to see that it was another company.”
The app which the FCCPC is referring to is called “Get Loan”, on Google Playstore, the initial description claims that it is offered by Sycamore Integrated Solutions Limited and was released in July 2022.
However, Sycamore’s spokesperson said that the app is not affiliated with them.
In the reviews section of “Get Loan” on Google Playstore, you will find users like Sonia Okon lamenting:
“This app is a total fraud, their agent called to tell me that I have been granted a loan of 100-200k, they convince me to download the app, and when I did, they end up approving a loan of 10k which I was to get only 6200 to repay 11k. Even when I declined the loan the agent said she was going to increase the amount and told me to send a screenshot but when I did, I ended up noticing she approved the loan and it wasn’t increased either, then she blocked me…. scammerssss.”
Unlike “Get Loan”, Sycamore’s current app on Playstore was released in March 2023 and was last updated on July 17, 2023, as of the time of this report.