As a further relief to app developers, Google has now announced that its new Play Store policy will take effect in October 2022, rather than March 2022. As a result of India’s recent changes to its recurring digital payment guidelines, the relief will “provide developers in India the required vendor support for recurring payments through comfortable user payment systems, including UPI and wallets, as well as provide them more time in light of these changes.”
A second extension to the deadline has come from the firm under pressure from app developers, start-ups and authorities in India as well as globally for charging a high commission and payment practises that give precedence to Google’s payment choices.. Earlier this year, Google cut the commission fee from 30% to 15% as a way to placate the ecosystem, which had been unhappy.
In an interview with the Times of India, a Google official said, “We appreciate the particular demands of the Indian developer ecosystem and remain committed to engaging with Indian developers on their growth journey. Developers in India had been given until the end of March 2022 to integrate with Play’s billing system when we set the deadline in October 2020. A new deadline of October 31, 2022, has been set for developers in India to allow recurring payments using user payment systems like UPI and wallets, and to provide them more time in light of the recent modifications in India’s recurrent digital payments requirements.”
For the first $1 million in yearly developer earnings, a 15% service charge reduction was made in July. Additionally, Google announced adjustments to the service charge model for Google Play in late October that reduced prices from 30% to 15% and decreased rates for select categories of apps inside the Play Media Experience Program to as little as 10%.
ADIF also filed a case with the Competition Commission of India (CCI) in October seeking interim relief from Google’s new PlayStore policy, which was originally scheduled to take effect in March 2022.
