Google is expanding its trials of third-party billing in markets outside the US with plans to test the feature in new markets including France, Brazil and Thailand. In a blog post about “gig economy” services on Google Play — which includes its own ride-sharing app called Chauffeur, plus apps from Uber, Lyft and others — Google also said it is partnering with Bumble to be an early tester of the new feature. Bumble has already signed up as one of the first few “commercial partners”.
Third party billing lets consumers pay for apps and content through alternative means—in this case, mobile phone bills rather than credit cards or PayPal accounts.
It’s a controversial idea because the service could be used to get around some of the features of Google’s own Play store, such as not being able to buy apps from independent developers that don’t use Google accounts to distribute them. If a consumer buys a new app outside of Google Play and uses that credit card or PayPal account, it would typically be considered fraudulent.
But for consumers it may also sound like an attractive option because, theoretically, they’d be able to use third-party billing with apps they choose and pay less than they do currently with their mobile phone carriers.
Google will launch this feature in markets where it already provides its own payment service. So it’s not gone global just yet. Google’s blog post doesn’t say when users can expect to see it, but from the tone of the post, it sounds like a date is close.
It reads: “As we continue to invest in our payment service for developers, and look for ways to help them offer better in-app experiences for their users, many have asked if we would support third-party billing … We’ve heard from developers that they want to use third-party billing providers like their existing merchant accounts and mobile operator billing services … Today we’re excited to announce that we will be bringing third-party billing providers into our payments service. This means that developers in markets like Australia, Canada, France, Germany and Sweden will be able to bring their users access to the Google Play store with their payment provider of choice.”
However, if you want to try it on your Android phone in countries where Google Play has parity with competing services such as Amazon’s Appstore or Apple’s iTunes store, you will need to come up with a workaround.
There are usually two ways of accessing Google Play outside of the official app. One is to go through a proxy server—such as one that comes pre-installed on most Android phones—that also allows you access to other apps such as Skype or Facebook.
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