Google Introducing Third-party Payments to Spotify and Bumble

Google is also expanding its user-choice billing program to more countries, including the US.

FREMONT, CA:Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) announced that it would start implementing support for third-party payments on well-known apps Spotify and Bumble. The user-choice billing system of the IT giant will also be extended to new nations, including the US. Previously announced for nations like India, Google's User Choice billing is now being extended to non-gaming apps, starting with Spotify and Bumble.

The initiative will also feature participation from the USA, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, Indonesia, Japan, and the European Economic Area.

Google announced in a blog post that it has been working closely with the Spotify team and is pleased to report that this week they began rolling out an initial test implementation of user choice billing to their users in certain countries. These apps are anticipated to soon reflect the update.

Unlike the current default approach, which only allows you to pay through Google's portal, Google has previously promised to offer more ways to buy Android apps. This restricted the user's options for selecting a payment method and compelled developers to give Google a sizable percentage of each sale.

Since then, many apps have complained about Google's limited pricing choices, which explains why people can only subscribe to services like Netflix through a website and not the app itself.  In the next months, it's anticipated that the adjustment will spread to additional widely used apps. More games and apps that allow in-app purchases will soon accept Google-less payments from users.