Opera accused of predatory loan offering and harassing loanees and their Android contacts
Opera software, famous for Opera browser is accused of extremely shady practices in Africa and India to keep itself alive. It is well known fact that Opera browser never really took off and it barely hangs on at 2-3% of browser market. Hindenburg Research found that Opera is now running shady money lending apps on Google play store to show revenue and cash flow to keep company alive. Read On!
To save Android users from these predatory loans, Google had set a policy that any Play Store application should give loan for minimum of 60 days. Even though Opera’s applications follow this policy on paper, they are alleged to take a U-turn and offer loans that should be paid inside 30 days and with extremely bad interest rates. This happens once customer provides his/her requirement to application. Opera’s mobile loan business app are OKash and OPesa in Kenya, CashBean in India and OPay in Nigeria.
Before Opera listed as public company, it was acquired by China based investor group and the group’s largest investor took Opera in this new direction of lending money under short loan period with extremely high interest rates. These rates range from 365 to 876%. Loanees are reportedly harassed by numerous reminder calls as due date nears.
The worst part here is when the loanee fails to clear the loan in time. Hindenburg Research claims that the recovery agents start collecting the loanee’s contact list and harass the loanee as well as his/her contacts. His/her contacts may get SMS that says something like
“Hello, kindly inform XX to pay the OKash loan of Sh2560 TODAY before we proceed and take legal action to retrieve the debt,’ says the text message the service provider sends to people in one’s contact list.”
Hindenburg Research has also provided clear screenshots of emails and loan quotes when they approached these applications in disguise. Go through the source once to get to know the sheer extent of alleged fraud and harassment.
I had high respect for Opera as they were genuinely good (when under Othello Corporation) but now, with such shady deals and practices, I may never ever use their products again, unless they prove that these reports are wrong. Targeting those in need of money and giving them mental torture, robbing them using predatory interest rates is absolutely inhuman and anyone who does this must be put out of business.
