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Opinions of Saturday, 10 December 2022

Columnist: Nana Barima

Online loan apps(loan sharks): Bank of Ghana watching nonchalantly.

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With the current economic hardships facing the average Ghanaian,online loan apps seems to be the only way out for some citizenry during emergency situations until they at least get their monthly pay or remittances.

However these apps are rather putting the borrowers into much debt.The most ridiculous part is,these apps usually gives loan out for a period of 6 to 7 days.

Notable amongst these apps is fourcredy also know as popcash,cocoa loan mascedi.For a loan of Gh140 for seven days the borrower will have to pay Gh 200.On the fifth day of the loans term their untrained customer service crew will start harrasing you with calls and bombarding your cellphone with messages.

(you can refer to them as “lenders from hell”) On their loan apps there is no option for borrowers to opt out or cancel a loan application and their loan approval sometimes takes up to two days for approval.I think they deliberately delay the loan approval to let you apply for multiple loans thinking you are dealing with a different loan company and then bam! they approve all meaning they get you in debt paying multiple loans.

If you want to contact them via WhatsApp you will realize that they haven’t been there for a while.you send an email and your email gets returned for non delivery, worse of all you call their office line and no one answers or whoever answers is in no capacity to assist you(fourcredy is the main culprit I have gathered a lot of evidence)Apart from fourcredy there is chasteloan and cedinow both apps have been taken off playstore app because playstore realized how terrible they operate after numerous complaints by whistle blowers like myself.

Truecedi is another loan app with bad ratings.Bank of Ghana has in the past given out a list of unregistered online loan apps.But my question is who is regulating these apps and why is it that their interest rates are so high? Someone somewhere is sleeping on the job because this should never happen in the first place.

I will like to draw the attention of the police cybercrime unit to liase with the bank of Ghana to investigate these online loan,regulate them or ban them completely and make sure they are taxed accordingly.If the banking sector has been consolidated and regulated as we all know then something must be done immediately with regards to cleaning this online loan apps.

My advice to all Ghanaians seeking loans is to stay away from online loan apps especially those mentioned here.

All victims of online loan apps who have credible records should contact email: classaction.onlineloan@yahoo.com

I am trying to get enough complaints to officially petition the bank of Ghana to look deeply into the activities of these online loan sharks

Nana Barima(pillars)