Ashneer Grover slams RBI's digital lending guidelines, says they don't understand UPI tech

"Him praying for his new startup," commented one Instagram user referring to Ashneer Grover's new venture Third Unicorn.

Ashneer Grover on Monday slammed RBI's digital lending guidelines and called it one of the worst in the world for discouraging fintech firms from lending.

Taking to Twitter, the former BharatPe founder and Shark Tank India judge said, "If UPI is the best tech/regulatory innovation in the world, the RBI’s digital lending guidelines have to be the worst."

"Essentially, RBI is telling Fintechs ‘Bhai, mat karo digital lending shending! Banks se hoti nahi, humein samajh aati nahi, aur pen paper ki sale bhi kam hogi’ (Don't engage in lending via digital methods. Banks haven't been able to manage it well and we don't understand it)."

If UPI is the best tech / regulatory innovation in the world, the RBI’s Digital Lending Guidelines have to be the worst. Essentially RBI is telling Fintechs ‘Bhai mat karo digital lending shending ! Banks se hoti nahi, humein samajh aati nahi, aur pen paper ki sale bhi kam hogi’

— Ashneer Grover (@Ashneer_Grover) September 5, 2022

Several internet users, however, disagreed with him citing harassment from different fintech firms.

"You should also try to listen to cries of thousands of people who either committed suicide or got into depression due to harassment by digital lenders," wrote user Rahul (@Rahul07773041).

Another Twitter user Mayank Bansal (@mayank23496) said, "Understand your sentiments but recent pathetic practices by Ola and Paytm left no choice! It's the right step. You shouldn't make a business by fooling customers."

"I believe that the RBI guidelines should be followed. I have recently seen money-lending apps refusing to acknowledge that the borrowers have returned their money and then resorting to sending vulgar messages to the borrower's family," commented Sahil Kataria (@tweet2sahil).

In a similar vein, Aviral Kaushik (@aviralforreal) said, "I stand with the RBI’s lending guidelines, digital lending is leading us into spending more than we are supposed to and our mental health being affected when we’re unable to pay it on time and end up paying penalties and heavy interests."

Read more: When Ashneer Grover urged investors buy free-falling Zomato shares

Ashneer Grover had earlier called RBI's decision to allow credit cards to be linked with the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), "a great move", but he had his reservations regarding merchant discount rate (MDR).

"Linking of credit cards on UPI is a great move by RBI. Unfortunately, it’ll be a non-starter unless issuers, especially banks understand that merchants will not pay MDR. So there is no interchange to be made on UPI," he had tweeted. "Merchants wouldn't want to pay for customer credit."

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