NEW DELHI, September 24 — Getting a personal loan in India no longer requires a branch visit, a stack of forms, or a conversation with a manager. According to a report by Himali Patel published in The Federal on 20 September 2026, borrowers can now open a phone app, enter a few details, and receive money within minutes. In financial year 2026, digital Non-Banking Financial Companies and lending apps account for a growing share of personal loan disbursements.
The mechanics here are simple, and that is precisely the point. An NBFC is not a bank.
It cannot take deposits the way a bank does, so it funds itself through borrowings and then lends. Put that lender inside an app, strip out the branch, the paperwork and the human conversation, and the cost of processing a small loan collapses. Speed stops being a courtesy and becomes the product.
The catch is what happens after the first loan
Patel’s central warning is that the cycle turns dangerous when one loan is used to repay another. That is loan stacking, and app-based credit makes it easier to do quietly. A borrower who would once have had to sit across a desk and explain a second loan request can now tap through it.
Each individual decision looks manageable. The sequence does not.
The report frames the question directly: whether the convenience of click-based borrowing is worth the risk. It is a personal finance explainer aimed at retail borrowers weighing the speed of app-based credit against the danger of debt cycles, published under The Federal’s Personal Finance section with a 7:00 PM IST timestamp and an audio version available.
What the report does not say
On closer reading, the source material is narrower than the headline shift suggests. It does not name individual apps. It gives no interest rates, no default rates, no regulatory actions, and no named borrowers, company executives or regulator statements.
Those gaps matter. The claim that digital NBFCs and apps hold a growing share of disbursements rests on the report’s own account, without a figure attached to it.
What can be said is structural. The shift moves credit decisions away from a branch officer who bears some relationship to the borrower and toward an automated process that does not. The disbursal is measured in minutes.
The consequences are not. Watch next for whether regulators move on the stacking problem, and for whether the lending apps themselves build in checks that a branch manager once provided by asking a question.
Until then, the speed is real, and so is the trap it can set.
