TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Financial Services Authority or OJK said that quite a lot of people borrow money from online lending companies for consumptive spending. In fact, quite many of them use the loans for online gambling.

"The fact is that among the public, there are many people who borrow money online for online gambling," Sarjito, OJK's deputy commissioner for the Supervision of Financial Services Business Actors' Behavior and Consumer Protection, said in Jakarta on Tuesday, December 12, 2023.

Sarjito did not clearly say how many people borrowed via the online lending platforms for online gambling. But he quoted data from the November 2023 Monthly Board of Commissioners Meeting or RDKB, which stated that there were 9,000 online gambling complaints.

Twenty-three year-old Jakarta resident Pandu (not his real name) said that he was one of those borrowers who took up loans for online gambling. He did not borrow from just one or two platforms, but from seven; SPinjam, Smart Credit, Akulaku, Indodana, Maucash, KTA Kilat, to Fast Rupiah. He ended up owing a total of Rp. 50 million.

"I used the money for fun, spending here and there, gambling," he told Tempo on Thursday, November 16. Luckily, he managed to pay up all of his debts.

TEMPO.CO

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