Loan apps or digital money lenders, as the companies behind them are known, have become essential in Nigeria’s informal economy by offering quick and accessible loans.
This is despite challenges around their operations, particularly in debt recovery practices, which has seen the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) placed some of them on its watchlist and directed the removal of 47 of them from the Google Play Store.
Nigerians’ continued reliance on these digital lenders shows the demand for quick financial solutions, even in the face of complaints about unethical practices like harassment and defamation.
However, many loan apps are operating legitimately, adhering to the FCCPC’s Limited Interim Regulatory/Registration Framework and other industry guidelines set by bodies like the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
With over 200 FCCPC-approved loan apps, one way to evaluate their reliability is through user ratings and reviews on app stores.
For this ranking, we focus on Google Play Store ratings, as most loan apps are unavailable on the Apple Store.
We first ranked loan apps in Nigeria based on this parameter in January this year. Interestingly, a look at the apps against their current ratings shows that there has been a lot of changes.
Here are the top 10 loan apps in Nigeria as of September 2024, based on their user ratings:
Carbon is a CBN-licensed digital bank that also provides a loan facility and investment opportunities, in addition to usual digital banking features such as debit cards. Accounts are enabled for P2P payments, as well as bill payments and mobile recharges.
The app has been downloaded over five million times on the Google Play Store.
While Carbon’s download figure has improved from over one million in January to over five million in August, its rating remained unchanged in the Play Store.
A total of 161,000 users had reviewed the app as of September 2024.
