Star Loan Nigeria App Review: this app is a scam

Loan apps are becoming popular in Nigeria, they provide easy access to funds without requiring borrowers to submit paperwork and collateral. These ease has endeared most Nigerians who use them to meet daily financial needs. The popularity of these apps has also given rise to unscrupulous individuals who create phishing apps to steal unsuspecting victims bank details and steal their money.

StarLoan APP advertises itself on Google play store as an app that provides Nigerians with small loans to meet short term financial emergencies. But this app doesn’t provide any loans for emergencies. If you download and apply for a loan, the app will put your application on review for days – first sign of a scam loan app.
The app was uploaded on play store on 15 September and within two weeks has over 800 reviews most of it giving the app a five star rating, another scam alert.

The app has more than 10k downloads already but almost all the legitimate reviews are negative. No one has confirmed getting a loan from the app.

When you first download the app like other legitimate loan apps, they will ask for some basic KYC information including BVN number to run a check on your credit score and determine your credit worthiness.

Loan apps asking for BVN is standard practice and they can’t use that information alone to access your funds. See what loan apps do with your BVN and how they make lending decisions based on the information linked to it.

Starloan however, does not stop there. The app will ask you for your bank information and ask you to bind your ATM card to your account in other to receive higher loans. This is the scam, loan apps are not supposed to ask for deposits before disbursing loans.

You might be wondering why such an app is still on Play store. We’ve reported it, you can report it too. What the scammers do is go write lots of fake reviews on the apps review section. They’ve created multiple fake accounts with fake names just for the purpose of writing such reviews and giving themselves five stars. When you see multiple names that don’t sound Nigerian on an app’s review, that is a good sign the app is probably fake.

Loan apps are of great help to most people, especially in this trying economy. They provide easy access to funds before month end when most people expect to get paid. If you’re in need of a legit loan app, check out one of the other reviews on this website.

We will continue to monitor Starloan app and the activities of the developers, for now avoid sharing sensitive bank details with the app.
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