Apple And Google Removed Trading Apps From Stores Fearing Scam

After Australian interference, Alphabet Inc., Google and Apple Inc. both removed over 300 so called binary trading apps from their platforms, Australian Securities & Investments Commission said it on Tuesday.

The Australian securities regulator said it made the request to Google and Apple over dozens of cases of financial fraud involving unlicensed operators of the apps. Some of the apps let users bet on the share and currencies whether they will rise or fall. However, there are some legitimate service providers but there has been an explosion of unlicensed products and operators that are operating across borders that are out of the reach of regional regulators.

Some of these apps “Make unbelievable claims” said Greg Yanco, head of market integrity at ASIC. He further said it’s a global issue that needs attention.

Apple’s spokesperson in Australia said, they have recently updated their developer guidelines which clearly prohibit all the new apps for using binary trading. However, Apple’s spokesperson denied to comment on the discussion with Australian authorizes on the matter.

Google spokesperson in Australia said, “We will remove the applications that violate the Google policies and we do not comment on individual applications.”

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ASIC has witnessed case in which consumers were unable to withdraw cash from their accounts. Some other cases indicate that in demo app people won 9 times out of 10 trades and they switch to live product in which they lose it all at once.

This is a real scam going on in the name of trading through these apps, naive traders get attracted to these apps and lose their hard earned money.

Apple has removed all these apps from its store globally however, Google has not confirmed yet whether the apps are removed globally or just in Australia, almost 330 apps that are removed now, 80% of them didn’t warn consumers about the risk of losing money that is inherent in trading, said ASIC.