Loan scams in Tanzania and where to report them

Written by the Kopesha team at Softsamic Company · Published 19 September 2026 · Updated 29 September 2026 · 13 min read · No lender pays for these guides · How we write and check them

A loan that needs a payment before it arrives

Imagine a WhatsApp message to a mama lishe in Temeke. It offers her TZS 1,500,000 by Friday, with no collateral (dhamana) and no questions about her business. There is one condition: she must send a TZS 15,000 registration fee to a mobile number so that her file can be opened.

She pays. The next day the "loan officer" calls with good news and one more step. The table shows how a run of requests like this adds up.

A hypothetical run of requests against a promised loan of TZS 1,500,000

Request	What it is called	Amount	Share of the promised loan	Paid so far
1	Registration fee	TZS 15,000	1%	TZS 15,000
2	Insurance	TZS 45,000	3%	TZS 60,000
3	Legal and stamp fee	TZS 30,000	2%	TZS 90,000
4	Release fee for the transfer	TZS 60,000	4%	TZS 150,000

By the fourth request she has sent TZS 150,000, which is 10% of a loan that never existed. This is advance-fee fraud (utapeli): the fees are the fraudster's whole income. Each request is small next to the amount promised, and each one comes with a reason why the money is nearly ready.

Signs that an offer is a fraud

No single sign proves fraud, but several together should stop you. Some of them also break rules that licensed microfinance lenders must follow.

Money has to leave you before any signed loan agreement (mkataba wa mkopo) exists.
The payment goes to a private mobile number, under a name that matches no lender on the Bank of Tanzania's register.
Approval is promised before anyone has looked at your income. Under Regulation 39(1), a licensed Tier 2 lender weighs your application against its lending policy and signs a loan agreement once it is satisfied that you meet its conditions and can repay.
There is no office. Regulation 9(1) says a Tier 2 lender must have a proper business address and must display its name prominently at those premises.
The offer expires today, or someone else is waiting for your slot.
You are told to keep it secret, even from your spouse or your business partner.
Someone asks for your mobile money PIN or the code (OTP) that has just arrived on your phone.

Tier 2 lenders are the companies and individual money lenders that the Bank licenses to lend without taking deposits. Unless another document is named, regulation numbers in this guide come from GN 679 of 2019, the Bank's rules for those lenders. They apply to Mainland Tanzania only, as the Microfinance Act 2018 does (section 2).

Can a licensed microfinance lender charge you before paying out?

In 2024 the Bank issued guidelines on what microfinance lenders may charge (full title in the sources), and guideline 4 limits them to Tier 2 lenders operating on the Mainland. The rules do not forbid every charge before payout, which is why "never pay a fee" is too blunt to protect you. They allow some fees and say little about when they are collected.

Fee names fraudsters like to use, and the rule for a licensed Tier 2 lender

What it is called	What the rules say
Application or processing fee	Allowed only as part of one management fee, charged once and kept reasonable and affordable (guideline 13(3) and (4)). It must be shown in the agreement (13(2)).
Credit report, search fee, title registration, tracking device	May be passed on to you, but never for more than the lender actually paid the third party (13(6)).
Insurance	Only the premium the insurer really charges, and none at all unless the loan is insured by a licensed insurance company (14).
Administrative, maintenance, office expenses, top-up or refinancing fee	Banned outright (17(2)).
Activation, unlocking, clearance or release fee	None of these is a fee name in the guidelines. Guideline 23(3) makes lenders use the guidelines' own terms or a name the Bank has approved.
Interest paid before the loan	An app the Bank has cleared may not make you pay interest in advance, or before the date a repayment falls due (Guidance Note on Digital Lenders 2024, 5.1(p)). This rule is written for digital lenders only.
A deposit or savings before the loan	A licensed Tier 2 lender may not accept deposits from the public unless the Bank authorises it (Regulation 22(a)). Cash collateral or compulsory savings (akiba) must be kept in a separate bank account, may not be lent out, and must be refunded when the loan is repaid (Regulation 23(1) and (2)). An individual money lender may not take them at all (23(3)).

Before you pay any fee, check for four things: the lender is on the Bank's register, you hold a signed agreement that lists every fee and the effective annual rate including fees (Regulation 39(2)(c) and (d)), the money goes to the lender itself rather than to a person, and you get a receipt in the lender's name. A fee sent to a private number before any agreement exists fails that test. The guide to fees a lender cannot charge goes through every banned and limited charge.

Other tricks that come with a loan offer

The cloned lender. A licensed lender's name, logo and licence number are copied onto a Facebook page or a WhatsApp profile, with a different phone number. The register prints a telephone number for nearly every lender, and an email for most, so call the number printed there. Many genuine small lenders list a mobile number and a Gmail address there, so what matters is whether the number matches the register, not what kind of number it is.
The famous name. On 24 February 2025 the Bank told "individuals and companies illegally using the name of the BoT" to stop. Its notice of 21 November 2024 named 69 lending apps that have no approval, and its list as of 28 February 2026 names 116. Several of the names on those lists carry the word "foundation" or a well-known person's name. A famous name on an app proves nothing about approval; only the Bank's lists show that.
The app that wants your whole phone. A cleared app may not go through your contacts, text messages, call history, pictures, stored files, email or social media accounts, whether to confirm who you are or to chase a late payment (Guidance Note 5.1(b)). An app that insists on seeing them should make you stop and check it.
The fixer. Someone offers, for a small payment, to push your file through at a bank or microfinance company. A Tier 2 lender decides by its own lending policy (Regulation 39(1)), and if it turns you down it must give you the reasons within seven days (Regulation 40).
The mistaken transfer. A text says someone sent you TZS 200,000 by mistake, followed by a call asking you to send it back quickly. Anyone can type a message that looks like a payment confirmation. Check your balance through your mobile money menu, and if money really did arrive by mistake, take it up with your provider's customer care, not with the caller.
The fake debt collector. Someone demands payment for a loan you do not recognise, sometimes claiming to be a lawyer. A licensed Tier 2 lender must give you 14 days' written notice before it starts collecting (Regulation 56(2)(a)), and may not falsely claim to be a lawyer or threaten action it cannot legally take (56(2)(e)). An approved app must tell you before it lets a debt collector contact you (Guidance Note 5.1(q)). Call the lender on its register number and ask what, if anything, you owe.

How to check whoever contacted you

Ask for the full registered name of the company or the individual money lender, and its licence number. Write down the number that contacted you.
Look the name up in the Bank's Register of Tier 2 Microfinance Service Providers. The edition current on 28 September 2026 is dated 14 August 2026, and the licence numbers in it begin with MSP2. Kopesha's lender directory is loaded from that edition and can be searched by region and district. It also shows a few lenders that added themselves, marked "Not on the register", and a lender that has claimed its page may have changed the contact details shown there. For a check like this, go by the Bank's own PDF.
Ring the telephone number printed in that PDF. Ask whether the person who contacted you works there and whether the offer is theirs.
For a loan app, compare it with the two lists the Bank keeps: apps it has cleared, and apps it has not. Is this loan app approved? shows where to find both and how to match a name.
A SACCOS or a community group (VICOBA) will not appear on the Tier 2 register at all, because section 5 of the Act puts SACCOS in Tier 3 and community microfinance groups in Tier 4. Checking that a lender is licensed explains where each tier is listed.
Pay nothing until you hold a signed agreement. The Bank's notice of 13 May 2024 says a borrower "should be issued with a copy of a duly signed loan contract", and should get one again whenever the lender grants a new loan.

Kausha damu, kobe and lenders with no licence

Not every bad loan is a fake one. Some lenders hand over real money without a licence. Loans on harsh, costly terms are popularly called kausha damu ("blood-drying"). At the launch of a boda boda SACCOS in Dodoma on 10 June 2025, the chairman of the regional riders' association described kausha damu as borrowing TZS 100,000 and paying back TZS 300,000, Mwananchi reported. The report gives no loan length, so no rate can be worked out from it.

Section 16(1) of the Microfinance Act 2018 says a person "shall not carry out any microfinance business, unless such person is licensed". Someone convicted of doing it at Tier 2 faces a fine from TZS 20 million up to TZS 100 million, a prison term from two to five years, or both (section 16(2)(a)).

The Bank has repeated this in public notices. On 13 May 2024 it said the ban covers loans given through digital platforms. On 21 November 2024 it said it was working with the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) to block the 69 apps it had named. On 31 December 2024 it said loans advertised on social media with animal symbols such as kobe (tortoise) and nyoka (snake) have no licence in Tanzania, and told the public to ignore them.

Borrowing from an unlicensed lender also leaves you outside the lender rules described above, because the 2019 regulations bind licensed providers. The Bank's page on unapproved lending apps warns that anyone who deals with them risks losing the protection of its 2019 consumer rules, as later amended. If you already owe such a lender, the debt and the way it is collected are separate questions: harassed by a loan app covers threats and messages to your contacts, and the guide to existing debt deals with the debt itself.

If you have already paid

Stop sending money. Whatever the next request is called, it belongs to the same scheme, and paying it will not release a loan.

Keep the evidence: the phone numbers, the names used, the messages and screenshots, the transaction IDs and times, and the name your mobile money confirmation showed for the person you paid.
Call your mobile money provider's or bank's customer care straight away with the transaction ID, and ask whether anything can still be done. If you gave away your PIN or a one-time code, ask them to secure your account and change the PIN at once.
Report it at a police station and ask for an RB number. TCRA's own guidance says all fraud, including phone fraud, goes to the police, who register the case under that number and assign an investigator.
Report the phone numbers to TCRA: send an SMS with the word UTAPELI to 15040, then enter the numbers used in the fraud when the reply asks for them. For questions, TCRA's toll-free line is 0800 008 272.
If the fraudster used a real lender's name, tell that lender on the number in the register. If an unlicensed lender or an app the Bank has not approved was involved, tell the Bank too, using the contacts in the table below.

Pretending to be someone else by using a computer system is an offence under section 15 of the Cybercrimes Act (Cap. 443). The penalty is a fine of at least TZS 5 million or three times the gain, whichever is greater, at least seven years in prison, or both. Unlike the Microfinance Act, that Act applies in Zanzibar as well as the Mainland (section 2).

Can you get the money back?

Since the 2025 amendment, Regulation 35 of the Financial Consumer Protection Regulations makes a provider the Bank licenses or supervises liable for fraud or scam losses involving money it holds for you, and requires a prompt refund unless it is proved that the loss came from your own negligence or fraud. Regulation 24(e) makes providers tell you that keeping your PIN and passwords secret is your responsibility, so a provider may argue that a PIN handed to a stranger, or a payment you sent yourself, was your own negligence. Ask anyway, in writing, and keep the reply.

Where to report other problems

Contacts as each body publishes them, read on 28 September 2026

What happened	Where to go	How
An unlicensed lender, or an app on neither of the Bank's lists	Bank of Tanzania, Directorate of Financial Sector Supervision	complaints-desk@bot.go.tz (the Bank's reporting address for unlicensed providers, from its public notices page); or info@bot.go.tz and +255 22 223 5586, from its notice of 31 December 2024
A licensed lender treated you unfairly	The lender's complaints desk first, then Sema na BoT	A Tier 2 lender must display its complaints contacts (Regulation 54(2)); then Sema na BoT by website, app, toll-free line or chatbot (complaint guidelines 2025, clause 25)
A mobile money problem that is not a crime	Bank of Tanzania, National Payment Systems Directorate	022 223 4494 to 97, as given in TCRA's consumer questions

An app that shamed you to your contacts or misused your data is a matter for the data protection commission as well, and harassed by a loan app sets out that route. The time limits a lender has to answer a complaint are in your rights as a borrower.

Kopesha does not lend money. If you asked for a call-back through Kopesha's loan request form, lenders with a Kopesha account in your region may see your name and number. Check whoever calls you on the register in the same way, and treat a demand for money before a signed agreement as you would from a stranger.

Sources

What changed

29 September 2026: Rewritten. Corrected the claim that a licensed lender never asks for money before paying out: for Tier 2 microfinance lenders on the Mainland, the 2024 fee guidelines allow one one-off management fee that includes application and processing (guideline 13) and third-party costs at actual cost, and the ban on upfront interest in the 2024 Guidance Note (5.1(p)) covers only digital lenders. Removed the unverified statement that a mobile money transfer can sometimes be held if reported fast enough. Replaced the general link to the Bank of Tanzania's notices page with the specific notices of 13 May 2024, 21 November 2024, 31 December 2024 and 24 February 2025; the page itself is now cited only for the address it gives for reporting unlicensed providers, complaints-desk@bot.go.tz. Moved the guide from Cost to Lenders. Added: a worked example of how advance fees add up; a table of fee names against the fee guidelines and Regulations 22 and 23; warning signs tied to Regulations 9 and 39; the cloned-lender, famous-name, fixer, mistaken-transfer and fake-collector tricks; the Bank's list of 116 unapproved apps as of 28 February 2026; the unlicensed-lending offence and penalties in section 16 of the Microfinance Act and the kobe and nyoka warning; reporting to the police for an RB number and to TCRA by SMS to 15040; section 15 of the Cybercrimes Act; the 2025 refund rule in Regulation 35 and its negligence exception; a note that Kopesha's lender directory also shows a few lenders that are not on the register; and a table of where to report.
24 September 2026: Added references to the Bank of Tanzania's regulations and a list of sources.
19 September 2026: First published.

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This guide is general information about borrowing in Tanzania. It is not legal or financial advice about your situation or about any particular lender, and the worked examples are examples, not a quote or an offer from anybody.