Google Play Billing Choice Still Excludes Games in 5 Markets

Google Play now lets games in the European Economic Area, the United States and Japan offer players a second, non-Google way to pay alongside Google Play’s billing. In the five other markets of its user choice billing pilot, games are still excluded.

Those five are Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa and the United Kingdom. There, according to Google’s Play Console help pages, only non-gaming apps can join.

Four years of the pilot

HaiPay read the pilot page in 22 readable archived copies from September 2022. In the earliest, the pilot covered the EEA, Australia, India, Indonesia and Japan, and no games at all. Brazil, South Africa and the US were added by December 2022, and the UK by March 2025. India was dropped from the pilot list by March 2023 and now has a programme of its own.

Games came later, one market at a time: the EEA by August 2024, the US by December 2025 and Japan by February 2026. Indonesia has been in the pilot since the earliest copy, more than four years, without a change for games.

Fee and the other programmes

Where an app offers user choice billing, Google says its service fee is reduced by 4% on transactions that users pay through the alternative system. In the US, the fee varies by programme.

South Korea and India have separate programmes that include games, on the same 4% reduction.

Why this matters

For game publishers that sell in-game items, and for their payment providers, the rules decide whether a player in Jakarta or Sao Paulo can be offered a local wallet or bank transfer inside a game on Google Play, or only Google’s own checkout.

In the EEA, the US and Japan, that choice now exists. In Indonesia, Brazil, Australia, South Africa and the UK, it does not yet.

What this does not show

The help pages describe eligibility, not take-up, and Google publishes no figures on how many apps use user choice billing. Changes are dated to archived copies taken every few months, so they may have happened earlier. HaiPay did not contact Google.

What to watch

Whether games are added in any of the five remaining markets.

Whether Google publishes any figures on how many apps use user choice billing.

And whether the UK, the most recent market to join, follows the EEA in opening the pilot to games.