Jordan Bevan
Google today released an article on Official Google India Blog and announced that it’s postponing the deadline for developers in India to comply with its new Play Store billing policy by six months to March 31, 2022, after over 150 Indian startups came together to discuss ways to challenge the new policy and started looking for alternative app markets.
Last week, Google announced the updated Play Store billing policy to ‘clarify’ in-app billing requirements and said less than 3% of developers who don’t use Google Play’s billing will be required to integrate it’s billing library into their apps within one year.
After the announcement, tens of Indian startups gathered over a Zoom call to discuss forming an informal coalition in order to express their complaints and began searching for alternative app stores.
And today, Google released a blog post and said that developers in the country will be given extra 6 months to get their apps ready for its billing policy.
“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.’’ said Purnima Kochikar, Director of Business Development of Games & Applications at Google Play. ‘’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.”
The company also said that the policy is not new and it just clarified the language in it.
‘’Last week we clarified the language in our Google Play Payments Policy in response to developer feedback that the policy language could be more clear regarding which types of transactions require the use of Google Play’s billing system. Our payments policy is not new — it is our global business model and policy, and we have always required developers who distribute their apps on Play to use Google Play’s billing system if they offer in-app purchases of digital goods. In fact more than 97% of developers with apps on Google Play already comply with the policy.‘’
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