Google just announced some changes to their adwords rules. They often review these and the ads that they support and .. in 2015 alone, (they) disabled more than 780 million ads for reasons ranging from counterfeiting to phishing. 

The main change is that they will be banning payday loans and loans whose repayments are less than 2 months (i.e short term) as..research has shown that these loans can result in unaffordable payment and high default rates for users so we will be updating our policies globally to reflect that.

Short term loans are increasing in volume in Kenya, thanks to mobile phone penetration. This week, both Equity Bank and Safaricom released financial results and there were some interesting notes about short term loans, mainly processed via phone.

• Safaricom M-Shwari: had Kshs 10.0 billion loans at year-end (March 31).
• KCB – MPESA loans were Kshs 1.47 billion.
• One million people have taken mobile phone loans at Equity Bank, totaling about Kshs 4 billion. The loans are now one month in duration, and they will progressively increase this to 3 months, then 6 month, and eventually one year as they get better at understanding their users after profilng and checking their credit (with credit reference bureaus). The loans are  approved within a few seconds of application and disbursed directly to the borrower’s mobile phones.

The banks don’t have to advertise these loans on google, as they are right in the user menus of every phone.

$1 = Kshs 100