Kredito.de was criticized heavily for trying to circumvent German legislation against usury as customers had to pay for a mandatory "credit-worthiness certificate" which cost €49.90, was valid for 30 days and whose cost was not reflected by the displayed effective interest rate. By German law an effective interest has to be communicated to a customer, all fees associated with a loan have to be included in the effective interest and the effective interest rate must not be substantially above market interest rates. Kredito.de was accused of usury by a spokesperson from the "Hamburger Verbraucherzentrale", a German institute for consumer protection, who called the service "dubious". After a couple of months Kredito.de closed its German platform. The now defunct platform Kredito.de was rebranded and restarted as Kreditech in late 2012. The company no longer offers loans in Germany, and has since eliminated the mandatory purchase of the controversial "credit-worthiness certificates" in all of their markets. While not offering short-term loans in Germany any longer, Kreditech is still criticised for offering short-term loans with effective yearly interest rates of several thousand percent. In Poland, for example, a customer is charged fees equal to an interest rate of 3305% for a 30-day loan with a face value of 502 zlotys. In Mexico a customer is charged fees equivalent to an effective interest rate of 6231% for a 7-day loan with a face value of 1000 Mexican Peso. Customer Data Leak The company had a leak of applicant data in November 2014 which the Hamburg police are investigating. The information was leaked from within by someone who worked at the company, according to the Kreditech spokesperson. References External links German companies established in 2012 Companies based in Hamburg Financial services companies of Germany Financial services companies established in 2012