There’s a new option available in South Korea
The Epic Games lawsuit against Google and Apple not only brought to light anticompetitive behavior present in both app stores, but also publicized efforts to block third-party billing methods on those platforms. South Korea was having none of this, and a bill passed by the country’s National Assembly, widely dubbed the “Anti-Google law,” prevents Google from forcing Play Store billing onto developers publishing apps on Google Play. We’re now seeing Google comply, and the company will support third-party billing methods on apps downloaded from Google Play — but there’s a few catches.
In-app payments can now be handled through an alternative billing system, rather than using Google’s own. If, for example, a service wants to offer a way for users to sign up for a monthly subscription through its Android app, now it can do so using its own billing method.
But, as I mentioned before, there are a handful of catches.
While developers can now use their own billing, they still need to support Google’s alongside theirs — they can’t forego the Google Play billing system entirely; they can just add an alternate method on top. In fact, the way Google is pitching this, users will be given a choice between Google Play billing and third-party billing. Then there’s also the fact that using a third-party billing method doesn’t allow developers to prevent Google from taking a cut, either. The cut the company takes will be lower — it drops to 11% from the usual 15% Google takes from most app developers. But there’s still a Google cut in the end, which we know isn’t the solution everyone wanted to see.
Also, if you were expecting this shift to be supported outside South Korea, good luck. The change is being made only to comply with Korean law, not out of Google’s goodwill, meaning that US folks will probably still pay for stuff through Google Play for the foreseeable future.
Are these changes enough to make Korean legislators happy? We’ll have to wait and see.
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