Google will work with industry partners and experts to combat online financial fraud such as predatory digital loan apps on the Play Store in India, the company announced at its Google for India 2023 event on October 19. The company is calling the new initiative DigiKavach. The Fintech Association for Consumer Empowerment (FACE) has been named as a priority flagger under this initiative and "as a priority flagger, FACE will support Google with market intelligence to inform detection and enable swift action against personal loan apps in India non-compliant with Play Store’s policies," Google explained. https://twitter.com/GoogleIndia/status/1714889095892083185?s=20 Why does this matter? Predatory loan apps (also known as fake loan apps) are the biggest challenge for app stores at the moment. These apps don’t have the necessary regulatory permission to function and they target vulnerable borrowers. If someone is late on a payment, the apps threaten to (and in some cases actually do) reach out to the friends and family of the borrower. In the worst case, these apps make fake sexual images of the borrower using photos from the phone gallery and threaten to share the same with the entire contact list of the borrower. Both Google Play Store and Apple App Store are filled with such predatory loan apps despite various measures taken to curb them such as the new digital lending guidelines, a rumoured whitelist of permitted apps sent by the Reserve Bank of India to app stores, Google Play's new policy of preventing loan apps from accessing sensitive user…
