Google says Play payments policy in India CCI-compliant, advances to implement

Alphabet Inc's Google said on Wednesday that its Play payments policy is in compliance with the Competition Commission of India’s (CCI) October 2022 order as it advances to implement the policy in India.

“We're respectfully following the CCI’s October 2022 order, and in compliance with that order, we expanded user choice billing to all developers in India and updated our policy that went into effect starting April 26, 2023,” the US-based firm said in a blog post.

Google highlighted that India’s app ecosystem has benefited from its investments in Google Play, which are partially funded by a service fee.

​​The search giant claims that its 15% or less developer fees are the lowest of any major app store. Moreover, according to its calculations, less than 60 of the more than 2,00,000 Indian developers on Google Play would pay a service charge of over 15%. 

The company further stated that the service fee is lowered by 4% if a user pays using an alternative billing system, which accurately reflects that Play's payment system was not utilised.

Google offers three billing options to developers in India: Google Play’s billing system, an alternative payment system, i.e., user's choice such as cards, wallets, net banking, and UPI, as well as a consumption-only system.

According to the company, the majority of app developers throughout the world have already chosen one of the three alternatives.

“In India, now that the deadline has passed, we are informing developers in the country who have not yet implemented one of these options that we will be taking necessary steps to ensure our policy is applied fairly,” the tech giant noted.

This development comes after CCI began an investigation into alleged non-compliance with the regulator's ruling on Play Store regulations issued in October last year, according to PTI.

CCI fined Google Rs 936.44 crore on October 25, 2022, for abusing its dominant position in terms of Play Store regulations.