IN SHORT: Facebook users should be wary of offers that sound too good to be true. Unfortunately, what appear to be loans from digital lender Tala are not legitimate.
The Facebook page Tala Quick Loans up to 250,000Kes masquerades as that of a popular digital lender operating in Kenya.
The page uses the name and graphics of Tala, a well-known digital lender operating in Kenya, India, Mexico and the Philippines, to offer loans to Kenyans on Facebook.
It claims to be able to deposit up to KSh300,000 (about US$1,948) into users' M-Pesa accounts within three minutes. M-Pesa is a mobile financial service provided by Safaricom, Kenya's largest telecommunications company.
According to the page, users are only required to provide their full name, ID number and phone number when applying for a loan. It also says that no credit check is carried out.
But is the page and its offerings to be trusted? We checked.
Security fee scam
The page has listed tala.kenya.com as its website. But when we tried to open it, it led to an unrelated online travel site. This is a red flag, as a reputable company would normally have its own website or app.
The adverts on the page are poorly written, with grammatical errors and some with repeated screenshots presented as proof of loan disbursement. This is uncharacteristic of a professionally run financial institution.
In its posts, the page claims that each loan amount has a security fee. This means users are required to make an upfront payment in order to receive their loans. A reputable lender will not ask you to pay money before they give you a loan - many will build their cost of lending into the total amount.
Tala previously told Africa Check that it has one Facebook page, which is verified.
Tala’s official Facebook page is verified and can be accessed from the company’s website www.tala.co. It has over 813,000 followers and was created on 12 June 2014.
In comparison, the page in question was created on 27 July 2023 and has only 352 followers.
The page Tala Quick Loans up to 250,000Kes is fake and its loan offers are a scam. It should be ignored.
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