Google explains Play Store’s billing policy for developers in India and how it will change after the CCI order

Google has been forced to make drastic changes to Play Store’s billing practices in India following an order by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) in October last year. The search giant has a monopoly in the Android ecosystem, as more than 95 percent of the country’s smartphone users use an Android phone.

This means that millions of people rely on the Play Store to download apps, making it directly profitable for Android developers. Now that the changes have been ordered, Google is publicly sharing the impact of the service fee on developers and how it’s being used to help developers get better tools and more. Google also explains that the Play Store’s service fee is one of the lowest compared to other major app stores, which could be used to talk about iOS.

For India, Google claims that only 3 percent of developers sell digital products or services for which they have to pay a service fee. And it also highlights different levels of service charges, which are less than 15 percent. As you can see below, Google seems to charge a 15 percent service fee for apps with recurring subscriptions.

To give better context, the company says that less than 60 developers out of the 200,000 Indian developers on Play Store pay more than 15 percent service fee.

And the company notes that the fee is reduced by another 4 percent if the user pays with a different billing system. Google also gives a detailed usage of the service fee charged to the developer. “The service fee allows Android and Google Play to provide essential tools and services to all developers to better serve their users and grow their businesses.”

It is interesting to see that Google is revealing all these details only after the CCI took strict action against the company last year. The new policy has come into effect on April 26, 2023 and has started notifying developers of support for third-party billing systems that can make these changes to get better revenue for their apps on the Play Store in India.

This is unlikely to be the last in Google’s battle with the CCI as the company questions its strategy with Android in the smart TV segment and even Google Maps, which has been the default navigation app for Android users in India for several years.

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