Google banned over 3,500 loan apps in India in 2022

Alphabet owned Google said that it has banned over 3,500 loan apps in India during the year 2022 as they violated Play Store’s policy requirements.

“In India, in 2022, we have reviewed and taken necessary enforcement action, including removal of apps, on more than 3,500 personal loan apps for violations of the Play policy requirements. We continue to uplevel our efforts in this area by regularly updating our policies and review processes.” Google spokesperson said.

Google has prevented 14 lakh 30 thousand apps from being released on Google Play for violating policies. “We also continued to combat malicious developers and fraud rings, banning 173K bad accounts, and preventing over $2 billion in fraudulent and abusive transactions.” The search engine giant posted on a blog.

Google, in 2021, had revised its Play Store developer program policy for financial services apps, including additional requirements for personal loan apps in India effective 15th September 2021. It included completing a declaration form confirming that they are either licensed by the RBI to provide personal loans and submit a copy of the license, or alternatively, confirm that they only provide a platform to facilitate money lending by duly licensed lenders.

In 2022, in India, they introduced additional requirements for developers offering personal loans in India as facilitators on behalf of NBFCs and banks, requiring them to also prominently disclose the names of all their partner NBFCs and banks in the app’s description and provide a live URL to the respective websites of partner NBFCs and banks where they are listed as an official agent.

“With strengthened Android platform protections and policies, and developer outreach and education, we prevented about 500K submitted apps from unnecessarily accessing sensitive permissions over the past 3 years,” Google mentioned in its post.