Listen to the Article: MetaQuotes Removed from Google Play in India - Déjà Vu or A New Crisis?

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So, have you heard the news? MetaQuotes' popular trading platforms, MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5, have been taken down again.

Well, here's a good news and a bad news. The bad news is that this time it was Google Play that has removed them, meaning Android users have lost their MT access. The good news? Well, it's only happening in India.

But does this mean that the impact of the removal of MetaQuotes has geographical boundaries? And how does this removal compare to when Apple pulled the plug on MTs over a year ago?

Oops! Removed Again.

Towards the end of February, Fazzaco reported that MT4 and MT5 disappeared from the Indian Google Play​. However, we didn't learn this from Google itself but from an Indian Forex YouTuber named Forex Salary. He found out that both MT4 and MT5 were gone from the Indian app store, along with XM and Tickmill, which couldn't be found in searches either.

Sound familiar? On September 24, 2022, Apple suddenly yanked MT4 and MT5 from its App Store without warning​. Because of the surprise and lack of notice, traders rushed to buy iPhones with MT software already installed. Apple quietly put them back on the store on March 7, 2023, almost half a year later.

Learn More:

What You Need to Know About MetaTrader 4/5's Return to AppStore​

India: A Growing But Often Ignored Forex Market

Before we talk about why MT4 and MT5 were removed from Android app store in India, let's take a look at the market there. In recent years, online trading has boomed in this subcontinental country for a few reasons. First, more affordable Chinese smartphones flooded the market, boosting smartphone ownership to 79.4% in 2023 from 65.8% in 2018, a fairly high penetration considering the comparatively low income level among its people.

Second, according to data from Sumsub, a UK-based fintech, that a shocking 96% of India's 1.4 billion people have their biometric data registered with the government. Digital IDs are replacing paper documents.

And last, the country's central bank, Reserve Bank of India, revealed some stunning growth in a statement published a few days ago, which indicates that they have seen approximately 90-fold increase over 12 years in retail digital payments across India ("growing from 162 crore transactions in FY2012-13 to over 14,726 crore transactions in 2023-24 (till February 2024)")  Today, India accounts for nearly 46% of the world's digital transactions.

With all this, the country has what it takes for online trading to explode: lots of smartphones, digital IDs, and widespread mobile payments.

Reasons Behind the Removal: Déjà Vu or a New Crisis?

In the past year, the Reserve Bank of India warned many unregulated forex brokers. In December 2023, they updated their list of unregulated forex trading firms, adding the number up to 75 brokers, some big names included.

So, one reason could be that the Indian government wants to crack down on unregulated brokers. But there might be more to it, because whatever is on the surface has been a cliche issue across all financial markets. Statistica says 95% of Indian smartphone users use Android, a staggering percentage we are looking at here. So removing MetaQuotes software could really hurt their domestic online trading industry. But why are they still doing this?

Well, this whole removal incident might also show the Indian government's long-standing worry: many developing countries tightly control forex because loosening it can cause big deficits. For example, if oil prices or the US dollar went stronger, India might have to raise interest rates, and that would slow down economic growth. So, from the Indian government's view, reining in the growing online forex industry is more of a result of political pressure. And cutting off its platforms is the easiest way to do it.