India’s Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has partnered with Google to place a “Verified” badge on locally regulated trading apps in the Indian Play Store, with the label now live on over 600 apps, as the regulator works to protect retail investors from fraudulent platforms impersonating legitimate brokers. It remains unclear whether offshore-regulated CFD brokers, which operate in a legal grey area in India, will qualify for the badge, potentially putting them at a visibility disadvantage against locally regulated competitors. SEBI also asked Google to deploy AI to track finfluencers breaching local regulations, citing more than 130,000 instances of misleading investment content flagged for takedown and 66 fake trading apps removed from app stores.
