Why Loan Apps Request SMS Access To Your Phone

Short Message Service (SMS) is a text-only phone messaging service subscription provided by different mobile network operators. In Kenya, we currently have three major network operators namely Safaricom, Airtel and Telkom.

However, the most dominant among them is Safaricom owing to its large subscriber base who depend mostly on its popular mobile money transfer service commonly referred to as Mpesa.

Due to this fact, the majority of the digital lenders have adopted Mpesa as their primary mode of funds disbursements to borrowers whose loans are approved.

However, prior to the loan approval process, one needs to first install the loan app, register, grant the app permission access then finally make an application.

One of such app permissions is access to read sms messages.

Granting a loan app access to your sms messages enables it to perform credit risk assessment which helps in determining an individual’s risk profile and also provide the appropriate credit analysis

Secondly, sms access is also beneficial in the provision of personalized offers through the monitoring of financial sms including senders, descriptions and send date through the identification of various cash accounts.

The third reason is that it enables the loan app to understand one’s financial history by scanning through messages from institutional senders such as M-Pesa to aid in the setting of loan limits.

Note:

SMS messages are a key component in loan approvals as well as in the assignment of loan limits and thus should NEVER be deleted.

It is therefore advisable to have some sort of back-up application that can be used to backup sms messages so that in the event that such messages are lost due to accidental deletion or theft of phone, one can easily restore them from the backup.