Following last month’s order by the Competition Commission of India prohibiting Google from requiring a 15% commission on in-app purchases for apps downloaded from Google Play, the company announced that it would not be enforcing this policy in India for the time being. As a result, India is the only country in the world where in-app purchases for digital goods can be made without paying any commission to Google.
A Google spokesperson told Entrackr that the company had no comment to make other than the announcement of the extension on its developer help documentation website. Indian developers had already benefited from an interim exception to this rule, with the enforcement deadline being pushed back to October 31, 2022. The extension was granted due to “unusual circumstances with the payments landscape in India,” according to Google; prominent Indian developers and companies, such as Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, had lobbied against the rule.