Google postpones enforcement of its new Play Store billing policy in India

Google is delaying the implementations of its new Play Store payment rules in India to April 2022. Everywhere else, the new policy will come into force in September 2020.

The decision to make an exception for India came after over the country’s 150 startups formed an informal coalition to potentially set up an alternative marketplace, free of Google’s 30% fee.

“We are setting up listening sessions with leading Indian startups to understand their concerns more deeply. We will be setting up Policy Workshops to help clear any additional questions about our Play Store policies. And we’re also extending the time for developers in India to integrate with the Play billing system, to ensure they have enough time to implement the UPI for subscription payment option that will be made available on Google Play — for all apps that currently use an alternative payment system we set a timeline of 31st March 2022,” said Purnima Kochikar, Director of Business Development of Games & Applications at Google Play.

Google dominates the country’s smartphone market, with 99% of the devices running on Android. Last week, the tech giant said that under its updted Google Play billing policies, every developer with app on Google Play Store will have give the company a cut of as much as 30%. Executive of high-profile Indian companies such as Paytm (India’s most valuable startup), MakeMyTrip, PolicyBazaar, RazorPay and ShareChat felt that “a 30% cut to Google is simply unfeasible.” The country’s startups and firms are in talks now on how to deal with what they feel to be Google’s monopoly.

This is happening as Epic Games, Spotify, Basecamp, Match Group and ProtonMail are forming their own alliance to negotiate new marketplace rules with Apple and Google.