MANILA -- A surge in online lending applications prompted the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center, an attached agency of the Department of Information and Communications Technology, to find more ways to ensure the safety and security of consumers.

The CICC inked a memorandum of agreement with the online loaning app JuanHand to partner with financial technology companies to increase public confidence in online lending platforms.

CICC aims to discourage the public from borrowing from unregistered collection agents.

“What we see in here, more so often, is the issue of collection. There are a lot of victims who are being harassed by unscrupulous online platforms who are not even registered. And these are the concerns that we’d like to address because kawawa naman ‘yong ating mga kababayan,” CICC Executive Director Undersecretary Alexander Ramos said.

“We would like to help them by leaving them to the registered platforms, that they shouldn’t fall victim to just any application offering financial services. Though it will be small loans, for example, P20,000, they end up paying P100,000. That’s too much. Too predatory,” he added. 

JuanHand President and CEO Francisco Roberto Mauricio warned of predatory practices, including excessive interest rates that reach more than 15 percent.

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Identity theft is also the most common scams being observed in the fintech industry.

“Someone applying trying to get data for another person and trying to borrow in behalf of that person, without that person’s knowledge. So phishing is also included there," Mauricio said. 

"We’re also seeing spikes of people calling and getting the OTPs of particular borrowers and using those OTPs in order to disperse, for example, the borrowed money into their account instead of the intended recipient’s account,” he added.

Mauricio added that addressing these issues would boost public confidence in using online lending apps. 

“The last thing we want is to make the borrowing public or the underserved uncomfortable with online lending. Because if they’re uncomfortable, where would they go? Loan sharks, five-six, and that, as we know, expenditure that is actually a worse way of them being harassed,” Mauricio said.

The CICC encouraged borrowers to report platforms that charge more than 15 percent and be aware of hidden charges.

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