Barwaqt, a Pakistani finance app infamous for stealing user data and exploiting customers has finally been removed from the Google Play Store. It seems that numerous reports from the app’s unfortunate victims have finally been noticed.
Searching for the app on Play Store now shows that the link has been removed.
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For those unaware, Barwaqt is a Pakistani app for online loans that offers multiple ways of receiving money. The company claims that customer information remains secure, but the app has been notoriously infamous for stealing personal data including phone numbers, names, email addresses, and more.
The government has also warned people against this app in the past.
The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) had cautioned digital lending Nonbank financial companies (NBFCs) of regulatory intervention if full disclosure and fair business practices are not ensured by the industry as a whole.
SECP recently called a zoom meeting of the chief executives of NBFCs engaged in digital lending to discuss recent media reports about exorbitant interest rates, inadequate disclosures, and coercive collection practices, purportedly being resorted to by lending platforms.
The Twitter thread below details the controversies the app has been involved in over time.
At the moment, the reason behind the app’s removal remains unclear, but it most likely has to do with mounting reports coming in from the fraudulent service’s victims.
We reached out to Barwaqt’s CEO for an official comment, but we have been unable to contact the company so far.
