Delisting of lending apps will be an ongoing process on Google Play Store

Verification involves manual interventions that can be quite complex

The taking down of personal loan apps that do not comply with a new Google Play Store update requiring them to share a link with partner banks and NBFCs, will be an ongoing process at Google, sources said. This is because the verification involves manual interventions, they added. This comes a day after the compliance deadline of the new policy.

“For apps that remain non-compliant with the requirements past any deadline provided, as is done for any policy non-compliance, we take necessary enforcement action as part of our ongoing policy compliance sweeps, including removal of apps from Play Store,” said a Google spokesperson.

Google Play Store, the largest distributor of mobile apps, announced an update on September 5, under which all personal lending apps must share with Google a live URL of the bank’s or NBFC’s website. The URL must mention that the app is a partner of that company.

The compliance deadline is September 19. However, the number of apps needed to be delisted after the new policy update could not be estimated.  

Google has previously said about 2,000 lending apps, or more than half of the total in the category, were deleted from Play Store between January and June for violating its policies.

“For all our policy updates, we start a compliance sweep after the deadline is over and accordingly we start enforcement if required. But there are manual interventions in the verification process of the latest requirement and it is a complex process. But that’s the only way Google can verify that the information given by the app developer is correct,” sources said.

The link to the partner’s website can be provided in the personal loan apps declaration form that all the app developers need to fill.

Google Play keeps revising its policies to ensure users have more transparency and to make policies more stringent. "We will continue to engage with law enforcement agencies and industry bodies to help address this issue,” the person said. 

Government authorities have been working to curb malpractices through instant loan apps. Illegal activities such as predatory lending, harassment, and blackmail by loan apps are on the rise since the start of the pandemic. 

Last year, RBI formed a panel after it received 2,562 complaints against digital lending apps from January 2020 to March 2021. The banking regulator had found over 600 unregistered lending apps available on the Play Store. 

Earlier this month, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharman asked RBI to prepare a whitelist of all the legal loan applications. 

The tech giant has global policies about the apps working in the personal lending space. For instance, it requires the minimum repayment period to be more than 60 days. In 2021, the tech giant came up with the requirement that developers of loan apps in India should provide a license from the Reserve Bank of India." 

Google has been updating its policies around financial apps around the world and in India too. Even before the current policy changes, financial apps that were into loans must submit a copy of the RBI license. Even for those who are not directly lending but only providing a platform by NBFC or banks then it needs to accordingly submit a declaration.