Google partners FACE to combat predatory digital lending apps in India

New Delhi, Oct 19 (IANS) Google on Thursday announced that it's collaborating with industry body Fintech Association for Consumer Empowerment (FACE) and onboarding them as a priority flagger, building on its consistent efforts to combat predatory digital lending apps on Play Store in India.

As part of this, FACE will support Google with market intelligence to inform detection and enable swift action against predatory personal loan apps in India that are non-compliant with Play Store’s policies.

"Our collaboration with Google marks a crucial step in our endeavour to enable a safe environment for consumers to access digital lending. The convergence of FACE’s market intelligence with Google’s efforts will add another critical layer of defence as these apps evolve in sophistication and speed," Sugandh Saxena, CEO at FACE, said in a statement.

Moreover, this collaboration contributes to the goals of Google's new safety initiative, DigiKavach, which aims to protect people from increasingly sophisticated financial scams perpetrated by online criminals by collaborating with industry experts.

"The combination of their market expertise and our rigour across threat intelligence, policies, and enforcement will strengthen our collective efforts to fight predatory loan apps and enable a safe user experience," said Saikat Mitra, Vice President and head of Trust & Safety, Google APAC.

FACE has been extensively monitoring the digital lending space in India and contributed to weeding out hundreds of predatory personal loan apps. In the last 15 months, FACE has reported over 700 dubious apps to app stores, regulators and government authorities.

Google has consistently worked towards combating fraud caused by personal loan apps on Google Play by updating its policies and review processes.

In 2022, Google reviewed and took necessary enforcement action on more than 3,500 personal loan apps for violations of Play policy requirements in India.