Zayloloan's own paperwork discloses a 458.59% APR — and the same company runs three more loan apps

A salaried borrower in Bengaluru was sanctioned a loan of ₹85,000 by Zayloloan. The amount that actually reached the borrower's account was ₹74,970. The roughly ₹10,030 difference was taken upfront as deductions before the money ever arrived — and yet interest is charged on the full ₹85,000, not on the ₹74,970 the borrower could actually use.

That is not a recovery agent's improvised figure. It sits in the company's own Key Facts Statement (KFS) — the standard disclosure the RBI requires every lender to give you before you borrow — which states an Annual Percentage Rate (APR) of 458.59% on a 39-day, single-repayment loan.

Zayloloan is the lending brand operated by Naman Finlease Pvt Ltd, a non-banking financial company (NBFC) registered with the Reserve Bank of India at Sl. No. 5115. This matters: this is not a story about an unlicensed app run from overseas. The Government of India has already blocked 600+ predatory digital-lending apps, and the RBI has issued repeated advisories about those. Zayloloan, by contrast, is RBI-registered. That is precisely why its own paperwork carries weight — the numbers below are not whispers about something done in the dark; they are what the lender itself wrote down.

The maths: lent low, charged high, repaid in one shot

The harm in this product is arithmetic, and you can read all of it in the lender's own disclosure.

Start with the gap between the sanctioned amount and the money received. On a sanctioned ₹85,000, only ₹74,970 was disbursed — about ₹10,030 was deducted before the funds arrived. Charging interest on the full ₹85,000 means the borrower pays for roughly ₹10,030 they never had. Charging interest on upfront-deducted money inflates the effective rate above whatever APR is quoted; in other words, the real cost of this loan is higher than the 458.59% the KFS already admits.

Now the rate structure. The KFS describes interest at 1% per day. Daily interest sounds small on a screen, but the arithmetic is brutal: 1% a day is roughly 365% a year before any penalties are added. On top of that sits a penal charge of 2% per day — a second daily meter that starts running the moment a single 39-day repayment is missed.

And it is a single repayment. There is no gentle six-instalment glide path here. The whole amount, with its daily-compounding cost, falls due at the end of 39 days. For a borrower already short of cash, a one-shot 39-day deadline is the structural feature most likely to tip them from "behind" into "in default" — at which point the 2%-per-day penal meter begins.

The pattern — money deducted upfront, interest charged on the full sanctioned figure, a daily rate dressed up in friendlier-sounding paperwork — is not unique to one product. It recurs across the wider investigation. You can read how the same arithmetic plays out in another case in this series, where a borrower received far less than the company is demanding back, and in the wider investigation that pulls these documents together.

One company, many brands

If the names of these apps feel endless, that is part of how the sector works — and it is worth understanding before you borrow from any of them.

Naman Finlease Pvt Ltd, the company behind Zayloloan, also operates the apps Qualoan, Funds Bull and Zepto Finance, according to the RBI register and the company's own corporate identity (CIN). One regulated NBFC; four consumer-facing brands.

The practical consequence is simple and important. A borrower who has a bad experience with one app, deletes it, and swears never to use it again may simply be lent to — and pursued for repayment by — the same company under a different name. The brand on the screen is marketing; the entity on the agreement is what actually governs your loan. This is exactly why verifying the company behind an app matters more than recognising the app's logo. The single registered NBFC is the entity the RBI holds accountable, whatever brand it is trading under that week.

How to verify the company behind the app

You can check any of this yourself, for free, before you borrow or while you are disputing a loan. The aim is to move from "I downloaded an app" to "I know which RBI-registered company is actually lending to me, and what it disclosed."

1. Find the lender's legal name. It is not the app's brand name. Look in the Key Facts Statement, the loan agreement, the sanction email, or the app's "About"/"Terms" page for the operating company — here, Naman Finlease Pvt Ltd, not "Zayloloan".
2. Check the RBI list of registered NBFCs. The RBI publishes the "List of NBFCs registered with the Reserve Bank of India." Search for the legal name and note the registration/Sl. number — for this lender, Sl. No. 5115. Cross-check the corporate name and registered particulars against what the app actually uses.
3. Read the Key Facts Statement before anything else. The KFS must disclose the loan amount, the amount actually disbursed, all upfront deductions, the interest rate, every fee, the APR, and the repayment schedule. If the figure that hits your bank account is lower than the "sanctioned" amount, the difference is an upfront deduction — and you are entitled to see it spelled out.
4. Do the arithmetic yourself. Convert any "per day" rate to a yearly figure (1% a day ≈ 365% a year before penalties), and check whether interest is being charged on the money you actually received or on a larger sanctioned figure. The gap is the part that quietly inflates your real cost.

Know your rights

Being behind on a loan does not place you outside the law's protection. Under the RBI Fair Practices Code and the Digital Lending Directions, a regulated lender and its recovery agents cannot:

• call you before 8 a.m. or after 7 p.m.;
• contact your employer, family, friends or references, or disclose your debt to them;
• use abuse, threats, intimidation or public shaming;
• hide the cost — the APR must be disclosed in the Key Facts Statement;
• recover the money by anything other than lawful means.

And the responsibility does not disappear into a call centre. The RBI is explicit that the Regulated Entity is accountable for the conduct of its recovery agents — so if an agent acting for any of Naman Finlease's brands breaches these rules, the NBFC is answerable for it.

One more point that recovery scripts deliberately blur: inability to repay a loan is, by itself, a civil matter. You cannot be jailed simply for being unable to pay, and a threat of "arrest" over a defaulted loan is itself unlawful pressure. (Certain specific situations — such as a dishonoured cheque under the Negotiable Instruments Act, or genuine fraud — are different and can carry criminal consequences; but ordinary default on a personal loan is not a crime, and no agent has the power to "send you to jail" for it.)

How to report it

If a lender has crossed these lines, the channels below are free, official, and the only ones you need. You never have to pay anyone to use them.

• RBI Sachet — sachet.rbi.org.in — to report an entity or an unlawful lending practice.
• RBI Ombudsman / Centralised Receipt and Processing Centre (CRPC) — for a complaint against a regulated NBFC, after you have first raised it in writing with the lender's grievance officer and waited 30 days without a satisfactory resolution.
• National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal — cybercrime.gov.in — and the helpline 1930 — for data exposure, blackmail, or harassment that has become criminal.
• Consumer commission — you also have the right to approach a consumer commission for deficiency in service or an unfair trade practice, for example where the true cost was not properly disclosed.

Whatever route you take, keep your evidence: the Key Facts Statement, the disbursal record showing what actually reached your account, every email, the call logs and the screenshots. The figures that make Zayloloan's loan so expensive are written in its own documents — which means a well-organised file turns your complaint into a case the regulator can act on. You do not have to face it alone, and you do not have to pay anyone to enforce these rights.

Right of reply: any company named here may submit a factual correction or response through our right-of-reply channel, and we will publish it.