A colleague had to visit a bank branch offline to close a personal loan he took online. This branch was one of only 2 in Bangalore. It’s the same with many other banks. Making it hard to close an account is a dark pattern, and maybe there should be regulations on this.

By the way, SEBI mandates that all stockbrokers must provide a facility to close accounts online. Additionally, at Zerodha, we are maybe one of the few brokers to allow online transfer of stocks to demat accounts outside Zerodha.

“A dark pattern (also known as a “deceptive design pattern”) is “a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things.” —Wikipedia

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