Google has announced that it will obey South Korea’s new law requiring app store operators to allow developers to implement alternative payment systems in their Android and iOS apps.
South Korea passed this particular law on Aug. 31, and in addition to opening mobile apps up to more payment systems, it forbid Google and Apple from obstructing the release of apps taking advantage of this capability. The law also lets the Korea Communications Commission fine Google and Apple up to 3% of their local revenues if they don’t comply with the new guidelines.
Google encourages developers to offer these new payment systems alongside Google Pay, however, and says they’ll still be required to pay the company a percentage of each purchase. That revenue split is slightly more favorable to developers—Google has reduced its cut of each purchase by 4%—but probably only before the payment system’s fees are taken into account.
“Like any business, we need to have a sustainable model to continue to improve our products while maintaining important user protections,” Google says in its blog post. “Just as it costs developers money to build an app, it costs us money to build and maintain an operating system and app store that makes those apps easily and safely accessible by consumers.”
The company also trumpets the popularity of Play Store features such as “parental controls, family payment methods, subscription management, Google Play gift cards, and Play Points” and says that 1.5 million users in South Korea have used Play Store gift cards, with another 12 million accruing 20 billion Play Points, which can’t be used with other payment systems.
“South Korean consumers value these features of Google Play’s billing ecosystem,” Google says, “and we believe it’s critical to continue to offer them the choice to use Google Play billing if they desire.” Of course it does—it would be strange if the company were to actively encourage developers to use other payment systems instead of the system it built into the marketplace.
Google says it will share more information about how Android devs can incorporate alternative payments in their apps “in the coming weeks and months.” That will include “instructions for submitting security and customer service verifications and a set of user experience guidelines so users can make an informed choice,” the company says, so we’ll see how that turns out.
