No more payday loan apps on the Google Play store. This is an effort to stop predatory lending practices. However, these new rules currently only apply to the U.S. Google is conforming with the recently-passed Truth in Lending Act, which ensures that apps for personal loans have to display their maximum APR — including both platforms that offer loans directly and those that connect consumers 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.”
In 2016 Google banned adverts for payday loans in its search browser.
“Google has fought predatory loans for a while, but now it’s taking that fight to its app store… Google recently banned Play Store apps with ‘deceptive or harmful’ personal loans where the annual percentage rate is 36 percent or higher, such as many payday loans. A spokesman said the expanded financial policy, implemented in August, was meant to ‘protect users’ against ‘exploitative’ terms,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
Payday loans are short-term loans, but they often come with high costs. “In general, payday loans are significantly more expensive than traditional loans. You may end up paying an annual percentage rate (APR) that exceeds 100 percent several times over. For example, you might pay a $20 fee to borrow $100 for two weeks. Depending on all of the terms, that calculates to an APR of more than 500 percent,” The Balance reported.
