The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) has licensed 10 more digital credit providers in the country.
The newly-licensed digital credit providers include Zenka, a popular mobile lending service that was one of the early applicants of the license, according to media reports but hadn’t featured in the previous lists from the Central Bank.
The move brings to 32 the number of licensed digital credit providers.
In January, the Central Bank, which is the financial services industry regulator, released a list of 22 digital credit providers that it had licensed.
Last year, CBK asked all unregulated (non-bank or Sacco) digital credit providers to register by mid-September.
Subsequently, CBK received applications for licensing from various digital credit providers. It approved 10 out of the 288 it received at the time. 12 more would be approved in January of the following year and, now, the regulator has licensed 10 more.
Digital credit providers are entities that run, among others, the loan apps and services that are popular in the country.
Platforms that list applications from digital credit providers like the Google Play Store require that they be licensed by a regulator in their country of origin and listed on the regulator’s website.
Google required digital credit providers to be licensed by the end of January.
Since then, Google has gone ahead to delist from its platform, the Play Store, apps from providers that hadn’t complied with its terms.
“It was not immediately clear how many loan apps had been blacklisted, but a spot check by TechCrunch today showed that nearly 500 apps previously in the Finance category on Play Store, including MoKash and Okash, had been taken down,” reported TechCrunch.
“In early February, TechCrunch counted 657 apps in the Finance category, which lists loans, banking and investing apps amongst others. Today, only 198 apps are listed in the category.”
Google allows digital credit providers who have applied for licensing and are pending approval to apply for temporary listing on the Play Store for a month and a half, pending the confirmation of their licensing status by uploading a declaration form attesting to the same.
See here an updated list of all the approved digital credit providers.
