Google has introduced plans to limit loan apps on its Play Store from accessing delicate user information akin to pictures, movies, and contacts. The replace, which was pushed to the Personal Loans Policy yesterday, will take impact from May thirty first.
“Apps that provide personal loans, or have the primary purpose of facilitating access to personal loans (i.e., lead generators or facilitators), are prohibited from accessing sensitive data, such as photos and contacts,” the corporate mentioned in its replace.
This transfer is in response to the rising considerations about predatory lending practices adopted by loan apps globally. In Africa—particularly Nigeria and Kenya—these (largely unregulated) lenders, undertake debt-shaming and unethical data-sharing practices to torture their prospects into reimbursement.
The proliferation of dangerous actors in these international locations gave approach to the strict regulatory oversight that adopted. Now, Kenya’s central financial institution and Nigeria’s Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) are steadily overhauling the business, one licence at a time. Google is additionally privy to those adjustments, permitting solely the licenced apps to stay on its platform
Google has been described in current occasions as a pseudo-regulator of African digital credit score suppliers. This transfer provides one other regulatory stroke that may additional handle the operators within the house, and hopefully, deal a deadly blow to predatory lending in Africa
…. to be continued
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