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Informist, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026

 

NEW DELHI – The Delhi High Court Wednesday sought the Reserve Bank of India's response in six weeks on the action it has taken to enforce the Reserve Bank of India (Digital Lending) Directions, 2025, as well as the steps the central bank took when an entity was found violating these norms. The high court issued a notice to the RBI on a petition against non-banking financial companies and other entities taking borrowers' data through digital lending applications.

 

A bench of Chief Justice D.K. Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia noted that the RBI had issued statutory guidelines titled Reserve Bank of India (Digital Lending) Directions, 2025, which were applicable to all digital lending activities of private and public banks. The guidelines are regulatory in nature and provide for certain measures for checking the proliferation of data of borrowers, the court said, adding that these also provide a mechanism for grievance redressal.

 

The petitioner, Himakshi Bhargav, had sought a direction to the RBI to take expeditious and time-bound enforcement action against all regulated entities, non-banking financial companies, and lending service providers operating digital lending applications, found to be in breach of the 2025 directions and the consequent suspension of these entities. The petitioner sought directions to Google LLC. and Apple India Pvt. Ltd. to suspend or delist all digital lending applications hosted on their platforms thet were either operating without registration with an RBI-regulated entity or which failed to comply with provisions of the RBI 2025 directions, until full and verifiable compliance was confirmed by the central bank.

 

While the guidelines issued in May largely consolidated prior regulatory instructions, they brought about two key changes – a new framework to ensure transparency when loan service providers aggregate offers from multiple lenders, and the creation of a public directory of digital lending apps.

 

The central bank has operationalised a framework to create a public directory of digital lending applications. As per the instructions, regulated entities have to furnish the details of their digital lending applications through the Centralised Information Management System portal of the central bank. 

 

Regulated entities must report all lending apps they operate or participate in — either directly or through third parties — on the RBI's Centralised Information Management System portal, the RBI said. Further, the chief compliance officer or another board-designated official of the regulated entity must certify that the listed lending apps are compliant with all regulatory norms. They must also confirm that the apps contain adequate borrower information, have grievance redressal mechanisms in place, and handle customer data responsibly.

 

Despite the issuance of binding directions, applications continue to access prohibited mobile phone resources such as contact lists and call logs, collect excessive personal and device-level data, and deploy coercive consent mechanisms, the petitioner said. Continued inaction by the RBI has allowed such violations to persist, necessitating urgent intervention by the court in public interest, the petitioner said.  End

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Avishek Dutta

 

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