Google to Offer Many EU App Developers a Tiny Break on In-App Payment Fees

pcmag.com:

Google will let non-game app developers in the European Union use somebody else's payment system for in-app digital transactions, but they won’t get much of a break on Google's "service fees." For most EU developers, the choice will be between letting Google keep 15% of an in-app transaction it processed and handing over 12% of an in-app transaction that Google didn’t touch. 

This attempt to read the European room comes weeks after the European Parliament voted by an overwhelming margin to approve the Digital Markets Act(Opens in a new window), a sprawling competition bill that within months will ban “gatekeeper” companies from such self-preferencing activities as requiring app developers to use their own payment mechanisms.

Google announced this upcoming move in a post Tuesday(Opens in a new window) by Estelle Werth, director of EU government affairs and public policy. 

“Developers who choose to use an alternative billing system will need to meet appropriate user protection requirements, and service fees and conditions will continue to apply in order to support our investments in Android and Play,” the post reads. 

It then spells out how this reduction in those fees would affect developers who today pay 15%, either because they charge for subscriptions(Opens in a new window) or because their Play Store annual revenue doesn’t exceed $1 million, a threshold above which Google starts taking 30%(Opens in a new window). “Since 99% of developers currently qualify for a service fee of 15% or less, those developers would pay a service fee of 12% or lower based on transactions through alternative billing," the post says.

(The “or less” seems to be a reference to the 10% cut Google offers to developers who qualify for its Play