Google today announced that it is beginning rolling out support for third-party payments on popular apps Spotify and Bumble. The tech giant’s user-choice billing will also be expanding to more countries, including the US. Google’s User Choice billing was also announced for countries like India previously and is now also expanding to non-gaming apps starting with Spotify and Bumble.
Other countries who will also be part of the program include Australia, Indonesia, Japan, the USA, Brazil, South Africa and the European Economic Area.
“We’ve been working closely with the Spotify team and are excited to announce that this week they begin rolling out an initial test implementation of user choice billing to their users in select countries,” Google said in a blog post. The change is expected to show up in these apps soon.
With this change, users buying a subscription in Spotify and Bumble will be able to pay for the same without using Google’s portals, although it remains to be seen what options will be available in India. You should likely be able to pay via an accepted credit/debit card or UPI portals.
Why does this billing change matter?
Google had earlier announced that it would be adding more ways to make purchases for Android apps instead of the current default method that limits you to paying via Google’s own portal. This not only limited the user’s choices of choosing a mode of payment, but also forced developers to pay Google a generous cut for every purchase.
Many apps have since been vocal about Google’s limited billing options, which is also the reason services like Netflix require you to obtain a subscription from a website and not from the app directly. Apps like Netflix which do this are not allowed to give users a link to their website as per Google’s rules. Keep in mind that the Competition Commission of India (CCI) has already directed Google against enforcing its own billing system on third-party apps for sale of digital goods.
The change is expected to come to more popular apps in the months to follow. Users will soon be able to make Google-less payments for a lot more apps and games that support in-app purchases.
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