Although Google has historically been relatively restrictive when it comes to letting users pay for digital material on the Play Store through their favourite merchant, it has started to loosen these rules this year. It began a trial programme for user choice billing a few months ago with a select group of developers in a select group of nations, and today it has shared some encouraging developments on this project.
First off, this week saw the rollout of user choice billing’s test implementation by Spotify, Google’s first partner. It makes sure that customers can use Spotify’s payment processors to pay for their subscriptions rather than being restricted to Google Play. In the upcoming weeks, Spotify intends to expand the scope of this implementation to additional nations. In a similar vein, Bumble has also chosen to work with Google on this pilot.
Currently, there are 35 countries participating in the user choice billing pilot, with the newest additions being the United States, Brazil, and South Africa. This is another significant update.
Google has made it clear that it is happy with the development and reception of this initiative so far. As the programme grows, the company intends to keep improving its solution to make it more efficient, frictionless, and secure for the user. Overall, the effort is positive because it gives both the developer and the end-user more autonomy. Apple has already drawn criticism for being overly restrictive in this area.
