Google Play Store clamps down on payday loan apps

Google Play Store
Google has announced it will be banning some payday loan apps from the Play Store as part of a crackdown on what it says are harmful practices.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is banning Play Store apps that offer what the company calls "deceptive or harmful" loans with annual percentage rates (APR) of 36 percent and higher.
The new expanded financial policy came into force in August, and Google says that it is already helping protect users against "exploitative" rates.

Protect

The new rules only apply to the US for the time being, in order to conform with the recently-passed Truth in Lending Act. This ensures that apps for personal loans have to display their maximum APR - including both platforms that offer loans directly and those that connect consumerd with third-party lenders.
“Our Google Play developer policies are designed to protect users and keep them safe,” a Google spokesman told the WSJ. “We expanded our financial-services policy to protect people from deceptive and exploitative personal-loan terms.”
The move follows similar action from Google back in 2016, when it banned adverts for payday loans in its search browser, having said that such were, “core to people’s livelihood and well being.”
Several US states have also looked to crack down on unfair rates in payday loans, with California last week signing a law that implements a 36 percent APR on consumer loans of $2,500 to $10,000.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Linktree’s free workaround lets you add multiple links to your Instagram bio

Image
Instagram only gives you one opportunity to link to outside resources inside its photo sharing platform. This might not be a problem for a majority of the users, but for those wanting a little more customization and even more options, it leaves much to be desired. Enter  Linktree , a free tool for Instagram designed to improve traffic to your outside link, be it a blog, portfolio, or store. How it works is fairly straightforward. After connecting Linktree to your Instagram profile, you’ll receive a single link to place in your Instagram bio. Once that link in place, you can customize what it’s linked to within your browser, be it a single website, or a collection of sites you’re looking to direct followers to Say you’re a photographer who’s using Instagram as a marketing tool for your wedding photography. Using Linktree, you can direct Instagram followers to your blog, your portfolio site, and even your other social media accounts. Until now, you would’ve been stuck c...
Read more

EVERYTHING WE KNOW ABOUT THE PIXEL 4, THE MOST-LEAKED PHONE EVER

Image
Google’s  Pixel 3 might have been the  most-leaked phone in history . Long before its unveiling, we knew practically everything about it from unboxing videos, photo comparisons, even a full review of the device. Surely, for the Pixel 4, Google would clamp down on leaks to leave some surprises for its debut on  October 15th , right? Let’s just say, if that was the plan, it didn’t exactly work out. We’ve now seen the Pixel 4 XL from every angle and in three different colors. At least seven different sources have touched this phone, many of them confirming the same specs. We not only know which cameras it’ll have, but also what they may be capable of, including air gestures (go figure). That doesn’t even count information Google has already shared  on purpose. So if you want to know almost everything about the Pixel 4 nearly a month before it’s announced, buckle up. We’ve sifted through all of the rumors and information we can find to compile everything we know —...
Read more

Stable Android 10 starts hitting the Galaxy Note10 and Note10+ (Update: Canada)

Image
UPDATE  1 : 2019/12/16 4:35AM PST Previous rollouts UPDATE  2 : 2020/01/06 2:15AM PST Canada Two weeks after the  Galaxy S10 line received its stable One UI 2.0 build , it’s time for the Galaxy Note10 and Note10+ to get the latest Android flavor. According to a report by  SamMobile , the two late-2019 Samsung flagships are receiving the Android 10 update in Germany, although the rollout is limited to a small group of beta testers. This stable release follows a  five-round beta testing  that concluded just a couple of days ago. Samsung is rolling out the stable build only to its beta testers in Germany to possibly look out for any major bug. Besides SamMobile, the confirmation also comes from  some Redditors  who got the update in Germany just a few hours back. The same Reddit users also mention that Google Pay remains broken even after installing this final Android 10 firmware, although it wasn’t immediately clear how widespread t...
Read more