“I Never Took Out This Loan”: What Evidence Courts Examine in Lending Disputes

Taking out a loan through a website or mobile application may take only a few minutes. However, this convenience has another side: when a dispute reaches court, the case no longer revolves around a paper agreement bearing a handwritten signature but around a chain of digital actions. A telephone number, one-time code, personal data, bank card details and authorization in an online account may all become evidence of who actually entered into the agreement. Therefore, simply stating “I never took out this loan” will generally not resolve the dispute. Courts seek to reconstruct the entire digital trail, from the customer’s identification to the receipt of the funds.

An Electronic Agreement Is a Fully Valid Agreement

Ukrainian law allows credit agreements to be concluded remotely. An electronic agreement executed in a manner prescribed by law may have the same legal consequences as an agreement concluded in traditional written form. One method of confirming the customer’s consent is an electronic signature using a one-time identifier, such as a code sent to a mobile phone.

Therefore, the borrower’s physical absence from the lender’s office proves little. In case No. 212/10457/21, the Supreme Court rejected the claimant’s argument that he could not have entered into the loan agreements because he was outside Ukraine at the relevant time. Since the agreements were concluded remotely, they could also have been entered into while the borrower was abroad.

Courts Examine the Entire Chain, Not Just a Single SMS Code

A more complicated situation arises when a person claims that someone else used their phone number or personal data.

The Supreme Court’s case law demonstrates that courts examine the entire set of digital circumstances surrounding the transaction. In case No. 686/32982/23, the court took into account that the borrower’s passport details, taxpayer identification number, telephone number, email address and bank card details had been used when the loan was obtained. At the same time, the claimant failed to prove that the telephone number used to execute the agreement with a one-time identifier had been controlled by another person without his knowledge at the time of the transaction.

The dispute therefore moves beyond the narrow question of “who owned the phone number?” to a much broader one: who completed the entire identification procedure and where did the money ultimately go?

The Bank Card May Become a Key Piece of Evidence

The account to which the lender transferred the loan proceeds can be particularly important.

In case No. 212/10457/21, the Supreme Court took into consideration that the funds under the disputed agreements had been transferred to a payment card belonging to the claimant himself. In the absence of proper evidence that another person had actually received the money through unlawful actions, this fact was inconsistent with the borrower’s claim that he had never consented to the agreements.

At the same time, the mere transfer of money to a particular card should not be viewed in isolation. In such disputes, courts may consider the entire body of evidence: the method of authorization, telephone number, personal data used, bank details and the circumstances in which access to the device was obtained.

What If the Owner Gave Fraudsters Access to the Phone?

In 2026, the Supreme Court considered an even more noteworthy situation.

In case No. 705/1938/25, the disputed agreement had been concluded through the bank’s mobile application using a one-time password. However, the claimant had himself provided third parties with remote access to the smartphone containing his financial phone number. The Supreme Court noted that the agreement could not have been concluded without access to the personal account and the use of a one-time identifier. In these circumstances, the risks associated with voluntarily granting third parties access to the device were borne by its owner.

This conclusion is particularly important for similar disputes. The fact that a fraudster may have physically performed the relevant actions does not necessarily make the agreement invalid if the opportunity to perform those actions arose because the smartphone owner voluntarily provided access to the device.

Reporting Fraud Does Not, by Itself, Prove Loan Fraud

Another common misconception is that an extract from the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations is sufficient to establish that a loan was taken out by someone else. The Supreme Court adopted a different approach in case No. 638/161/22. The opening of criminal proceedings confirms that an investigation has begun, but it does not in itself establish that an unknown person obtained the claimant’s personal data and entered into a loan agreement in the claimant’s name.

For the purposes of a civil dispute, specific materials from the criminal investigation, expert findings and other evidence may therefore be relevant. The mere fact that a report of a possible criminal offence has been registered is not enough.

What Must Be Proven If the Loan Was Actually Taken Out by Someone Else?

The Supreme Court’s case law reflects a pragmatic approach: a court judgment cannot be based solely on an assumption that fraud occurred.

A person who denies entering into an electronic credit agreement should therefore collect evidence supporting the entire alternative scenario rather than a single isolated fact. Relevant questions may include who controlled the telephone number, whether the SIM card had been reissued, who owned the account to which the funds were transferred, who had access to the smartphone and banking applications, and how the identification procedure was completed.

At the same time, the lender’s position should not rest solely on producing a PDF copy of the agreement. The ability to demonstrate the electronic process through which the agreement was concluded and the customer identified may be crucial.

As a result, online lending litigation is increasingly becoming a dispute over the digital trail. The more comprehensively either party can reconstruct that trail — from authorization to the transfer of funds — the stronger its evidentiary position is likely to be.