Phoenix Payment Solution Ltd., an approved digital moneylender, sent defamatory messages to the phone contacts of Lagos resident Gbenga Tobi (not real name) on Wednesday, describing him as a thief and criminal.
Tobi defaulted on an instant loan of N5,700. He took the loan on January 7 and it became repayable on January 14 at the sum of N10,910.
Tobi told FIJ on Thursday that he attempted to repay the loan on the due date but he kept getting a system response indicating that the PalmPay account number the lender gave him was invalid.
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When an unnamed female agent of the company called him on January 15, Tobi explained the challenge he faced to her but it fell on deaf ears.
A poster sent to Tobi’s contact list.
“I was due to repay the loan on Tuesday but I could not pay because I was having issues with my payment option. On Wednesday, a female agent called me [and was] speaking aggressively. I told her the account number was showing ‘invalid’ but she refused to listen to me. She was just shouting on the phone,” Tobi narrated.
Some minutes after the call, the agent began sending injurious WhatsApp messages accompanied by Tobi’s picture to his phone contacts.
A dashboard showing Tobi’s overdue loan amount.
His contacts were shocked and many, including his boss and colleagues at work, forwarded the messages to him. Tobi said that his boss almost sanctioned him.
“This loan company then inputted my bank verification number (BVN), phone number and image on a poster and sent it to all my acquaintances and relatives,” the Lagos resident explained.
Boldly written on the poster: “Wanted. Thief/Criminal. If [you] know any information concerning this person, please contact your nearest police station”.
Tobi said the post had lowered his estimation in the eyes of some of his colleagues at work.
On Thursday, FIJ called an agent at Phoenix Payment Solution Ltd. on one of the phone numbers Tobi had been using to speak with the company. The agent said his name was Felix.
Felix said Tobi’s claim that the account was invalid was untrue, but the customer maintained that the system told him the account number was invalid and that he had told the female agent.
“It is a lie that we gave him a wrong account,” Felix said on the phone.
He also explained the steps the company usually took before sending out character-damaging messages about a defaulting customer to their contacts.
A screenshot of Tobi’s WhatsApp chat with an agent of the company a day after the loan was overdue.
“We would first call a customer a day before their due date and then on the due date. If they fail, we would repeat the call for like three days of the loan being overdue,” Felix claimed.
“We would then proceed to inform and warn all their contacts to advise them to settle their unpaid loan. We would still remind the customer directly about the repayment. But if they act stubborn against the loan agreement, then we would start posting messages out.
“We have thousands of customers like him who fail to repay their loans and even dare us to do our worst. It is not our fault. When we lend customers money, we expect them to pay back on time.”
Felix’s explanation that the company waits for about three days before they start calling out a defaulting customer is inconsistent with Tobi’s experience. The company started sending false messages about Tobi a day after his loan was due.
Felix abruptly ended the call when FIJ asked him to comment on the propriety of his organisation’s method of levelling false allegations against and mischaracterising customers just to recover loans, particularly when a customer has not exhibited any unwillingness to offset their debt.
Phoenix is number 108 on the list of digital moneylenders fully approved by the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) in 2023.
READ ALSO: FULL LIST: Approved Loan Apps in Nigeria
The company’s other loan portfolios include Cashlawn, which is at the top of the FCCPC’s watchlist, and Cashtress.
Yet, the company keeps violating customers’ privacy and other personal rights. Sometimes, it makes repeated unsolicited phone calls to random people asking them to borrow money from its app. Some customers have even received unrequested loans this way.
FIJ reported in September 2024 how Phoenix disbursed an unauthorised loan to an Oyo State civil servant. The company began harassing the customer to pay the loan with over 100% interest seven days later.
The post ‘He Is a Criminal’ — Phoenix Payment Solution Maligns Lagos Customer Over N5,700 Loan appeared first on Foundation For Investigative Journalism.