Google announced today that it’s enabling user choice billing in its UK Play Store, allowing developers to use other in-app payment systems than Google’s. The arrival of user choice billing on the UK Play Store follows an investigation into mobile ecosystems from the UK’s CMA, which determined three years ago that Google and Apple’s tight control over their mobile app stores negatively affects competition and user choice.
“While over 90% of our developers are “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with Google Play’s billing, which provides a secure way for people to buy subscriptions and digital goods in apps, we recognise that some developers may want more choice in how they process payments,” said Myrto Tagara, Competition Counsel, Google. “This launch enables developers to offer an additional billing system alongside Google Play’s billing system and users can choose which option to use at checkout.”
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Google is first enabling user choice billing in the UK Play Store for non-gaming apps, similar to what it did in other countries. Interested developers will only be able to offer alternative billing systems within their apps, however. Moreover, they will still need to pay service fees to Google for every transaction, but these will be reduced by 4%. They will also need to provide customer support for users of the alternative billing system and provide a process to dispute unauthorized transactions.
In addition to the UK, user choice billing in the Google Play Store is currently only available in the US, Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, South Africa, and European Economic Area (EEA) countries.
