The government has recently announced a ban on the use of 94 lending applications, a fraction of which constitute of Indian apps, along with many non-Chinese players on the list too.
Among the finance related applications banned most recently, is the ‘buy-now-pay-later’ service LazyPay. Its website has been blocked by various internet service providers (ISPs) in India.
LazyPay is owned by the Netherlands-based payment service provider to online merchants PayU. Directing the users on the issue, LazyPay mentioned on its website on Monday that its website had been blocked as per the order of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under the IT Act, 2000.
However, the reason for blocking the app is not known exactly. A spokesperson for PayU said to ET that due to unavoidable circumstances, the company’s Website and App are currently unavailable via a few Internet Service Providers.
“Please be assured that we are doing everything to resolve the issue,” they said.
Meanwhile, another fintech company or lending platform called Kissht has also been blocked by the Indian Government, as the country has been moving swiftly towards curbing the misuse of consumers’ data.
Kissht is backed by Vertex Growth and Brunei Investment and has a valuation of more than $450 million. So far since its inception, the high-profile fintech startup has raised a total of $125 million.
A spokesperson for the company said to TechCrunch that it had no Chinese stakeholders and was aware that “Google has been asked to take down a list of companies from the Play Store that includes our company.”
“We are reaching out to Meity to resolve this as soon as possible as lakhs of our customers who avail our services are impacted. This will impact their ability to use credit for productive purposes,” the company’s cofounder Ranvir Singh said to ET.
He added that MeitY gets its inputs from the Ministry of Home Affairs for blocking apps and sites. The MHA may have received inputs from various law enforcement agencies, including state police cyber cells, which could have got complaints against some of the apps.
