HOAX: This Facebook page offering loans to women and youth is not legitimate
The page with this offer impersonates the Kenya Women Microfinance Bank, and directs applicants to a form asking for a ‘processing fee’
A Facebook page named ‘KWFT Loans Kenya Limited’ offering loans to applicants and asking them to pay a registration fee beforehand is a HOAX.
The link shared on the post directs to nairobivoice.com, and offers loans to prospective clients, asking them to fill a form with personal information, such as names, phone numbers and ID numbers. While the name of the company offering the loans does not appear on the site, its name shows up as ‘Women and Youth Funding’ on the Terms and Conditions page of the website.
There are several indicators that the site and the loans it offers are fake. The site’s banner text reads ‘Quick access Fast and online: Apply Now’, and does not contain any recognizable branding.
The website lists the physical address of the lending company as the second floor of the West End building in Nairobi’s Westlands area. This is the address of the Commission on Administrative Justice.
The ‘Our Vision’ text on the site appears to be copied from that of microfinance company Musoni.
The criteria to qualify for a form listed on the site includes the use of mobile money services such as MPesa and Airtel Money for more than 3 months, and that the minimum and maximum amounts anyone can borrow are KSh 2,000 and KSh 300,000 respectively.
One requirement that has appeared in other scam loan sites is for first-time applicants to pay a fee of KSh 390 that would be refunded if the application was unsuccessful. The fee is not sent to a Paybill number, but to a personal number.
A look at the WHOIS information of the website shows that the site was registered on January 16, 2020, while the WHOIS information for KWFT bank the official site of the Kenya Women Microfinance Bank website, shows that the domain was registered in 2014.
The Facebook page offering these loans is called ‘KWFT Loans Kenya Limited’, which does not exist. KWFT is the Kenya Women Microfinance Bank, formerly known as Kenya Women Finance Trust, which was founded in 1981 to address the financial needs of women.
The bank offers different loan facilities to its clients. A client is required to make a loan application form at a physical branch of the bank.
Rafael Kimani, a customer service manager at KWFT, told PesaCheck that the bank does not ask loan applicants to fill forms online. Rather, they offer loans to clients who have accounts with them, and whose accounts meet the requirements for the applied loans. He also confirmed that customers are not required to pay before getting loans from their bank.
PesaCheck has previously looked into a similar scam that also offered loans from KWFT through an online application form and asked applicants to pay a fee beforehand.
PesaCheck has looked into the claim that KWFT loans Kenya Limited is giving its clients loans that are processed within 30 minutes of application and finds it to be a HOAX.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake news or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck Fact-Checker Sylvia Makinia and edited by PesaCheck Copy Editor Rose Lukalo.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck Managing Editor Eric Mugendi.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water/sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.
