It has been around six months since the launch of carrier billing in India, starting with Idea Cellular. Due to lack of payment modes in India, carrier billing came to the rescue of Idea users who did not want to purchase any products on the Play Store through debit, credit cards and gift cards.
The same billing method will be soon extended to the largest telcos in India – Airtel and Vodafone. Going forward, Airtel and Vodafone subscribers will be able to purchase products on Google Play Store directly without the need of an alternate payment method.
Getting users to pay for apps on Play Store is becoming a challenge for Google and by extending this method, the company wants to encourage app developers as well as Android users. The company will roll out the new payment method in the coming days.
Google has not announced tie-up with Bharti Airtel and Vodafone yet, but app developers at Google’s PlayTime event tweeted the possibility of this. Google will extend the partnership with Airtel and Vodafone very soon.
Instead of paying through a credit card or a debit card, the price of the purchase will directly be either added to your bill for postpaid users, or cut from the balance amount for prepaid users. It is simply an alternative to the tedious card payment system.
When we checked the same for Airtel, we could not see ‘bill by Airtel account’ information. However, in the future this exact piece of message will be displayed to confirm your payment through your network operator.
This payment system will also encompass Google Books, Google Music and Google Movies, so you don’t have to worry about things other than apps. In fact, Google also ensures that all this transaction is kept safe and secure, and no information will leak out of the two parties involved.
The only caveat is that a small convenience fee is charged by Google for payments through mobile carriers, which seems fair for Google and mobile operators. This move will bring a whole lot of customers under the umbrella and probably push app developers to create more innovative apps are competitive prices.