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by dfabulich 1677 days ago
This post is from Nov 4. (The dateline is written in Korean.)

The big surprise here is/was that Google intends to charge a "service fee" to developers who use an alternative billing system.

> We recognize, however, that developers will incur costs to support their billing system, so when a user selects alternative billing, we will reduce the developer’s service fee by 4%. For example, for the vast majority of developers who pay 15% for transactions through Google Play's billing system, their service fee for transactions through the alternate billing system would be 11%.

I was hoping that at some point in the weeks to follow, they'd clarify how this is supposed to work. Presumably Google will require me to send them a report of how much money I'd made?

And then I guess I'd write Google a check for 11% of my earnings…?? Quarterly? Monthly? What happens if I miss a payment?
3 comments
nodamage 1677 days ago
> Presumably Google will require me to send them a report of how much money I'd made?

This isn't particularly uncommon for revenue based licensing agreements. For example, Epic requires you to file a quarterly report once you commercially release a product based on the Unreal Engine. (https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/release)

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jbigelow76 1677 days ago
Presumably Google will require me to send them a report of how much money I'd made?

And then I guess I'd write Google a check for 11% of my earnings…?? Quarterly? Monthly? What happens if I miss a payment?

There has to be some sort of callback into the app on successful payment so that the purchased functionality can be unlocked. Seems like Google would be able to inspect the combination of the app purchase metadata and the callback activity to come up with their vig. Just my guess though.

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Aissen 1677 days ago
I'm guessing, based on the screenshot, that you'll only be able to use a third party payment system if you use a special API that will let Google know of every transaction.

I'm also guessing that this means that third party payment processors will have to register to be available on this new API.

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