For more than a decade, the mobile app economy has worked like an upscale shopping mall, where the landlord (Google) requires every shop (the App Developer) to lease its cash register and then does as it pleases with each and every sales receipt. If you wanted to purchase a sword in a game or a subscription to a meditation app, you paid Google, which then added the bill and paid the developer. But in India, such regulators have been smashing holes in the walls of this mall by allowing shopkeepers to use their own card machines. Google’s newest change results from this pressure.
Visualizing User Choice
N5E2 follows up on ‘User Choice Billing.’ In the past, Google even supported alternative payment systems, but did so in a clunky, confusing way — usually a pathway to nudging users back toward Google’s own system. UI Improvements: New updates to improve the user interface (UI). Next time an Indian rider is ready to pay, the hope is they are faced with a more straightforward decision: “Pay with Google Play” or “Pay through” [Developer’s Preferred System]. This is akin to walking up to a counter and finding two separate card terminals sitting right next to each other, with no superfluous friction preventing you from picking the one you like.
Why The UI Matters
Perhaps you are thinking, “Who cares what the menu looks like? But in tech, design is power. If the alternative payment button is grey, small, or hidden behind three clicks, no one uses it. By simplifying this UI, Google is meeting the requirements of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) and setting a new trend in the global app economy. India tends to be a testing ground for these regulatory battles.
The Developer’s Dilemma
This comes as a huge relief to local developers. Third-party payment processors typically charge lower transaction fees than Google does (as high as 30%). That small visual change on the billing screen is actually a major rearrangement of how money flows in the Indian digital world. It gives the people making content more power to keep revenue and also, in theory, even if not always in practice, to reduce prices for consumers. The walled garden is not tumbling into ruin yet, but Google has certainly hung a new, roomier gate.
