Google has been dealing with a legal battle with India’s Competition Commission of India (CCI). Since, a couple of months ago, the authority notified the search engine giant to restructure its approach toward smartphone OEMs. As a part of this, they have suggested various new guidelines and also imposed a penalty of Rs 1,338 crore. This is for crooked its dominant position in the Android smartphone market. Simultaneously, Google has now introduced that the app will enable its app developers to offer a third-party billing system for in-app purchases.
Google’s Announcement Regarding Third-Party Billing System
A couple of days back, Google’s support page introduced that the search engine giant is updating Google Play’s payment policy. While the introduction of new policies is in response to the legal actions against the company in India.
Moving ahead the app developers had to depend on Google’s billing system for in-app purchases. Although, the service will be controlled by users on the transaction, in case they want to opt to pay via a third-party billing system. It also clues that the app developer will need to pay for service between 6 to 26 percent.
Whereas, the rate of service charges completely depends on the type of app or service. Also, it relies on the annual revenue that it generates through Google Play.
At the same time, the giant also disclosed the mediator steps that developers must go through in order to offer an alternate billing system until it builds APIs. And once it got ready by later this year (2023), it will streamline third-party billion integration.
Notably, this new alternate billing system is an extension of the pilot program. This makes it available in India, Australia, Indonesia, Japan, and the European Economic Area. Although, due to some unrevealed reason, this program was not brought for game developers.
Moreover, Google will step towards all possible measures in order to comply with CCI’s directive. It is because India is one of the vast markets for Google Play in regard to app downloads and users respectively.
To be informed, Google was fined another Rs 936.44 crore for exploiting its position with the Play Store policies. While the company is able to obtain relief after it approached National Company Law Appellate Tribunal. Therefore, the company moved to the honorable Supreme Court to re-evaluate the tribunal’s decision. But the court deny to interfere in the matter, and it directed NCLAT to resolve the matter by March 31, 2023.
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