Who needs a credit card when one can pay directly through their mobile operator. This is probably going to happen as the search giant Google and India’s biggest operator Airtel are in talks to allow users to pay for services like paid-apps, in-app purchases, e-books etc., through their operator.
At present, Indian mobile users can pay for their purchases from Google's apps store Google Play through credit cards, debit cards or gift cards. Operators have been traditionally taking over 50% of the revenues. However, over the years, operators have been under pressure to pay out more to publishers and developers. Recently, Vodafone made changes to its revenue sharing policy and said it will share revenues on a 70:30 basis in favour of the content creator.
Currently, it offers carrier billing option to customers in 26 countries, including the US, UK and Singapore. In June, it tied up with UAE-based telco Etisalat to offer carrier billing in the region.
Airtel has about 40m subscribers out of which 12.5m are on 3G. 4G is also available in certain regions and is gradually spreading. So if the deal works out, it may increase Google’s paid service customers as Google's digital goods and apps business is expected to bring in over $5 billion in revenues by 2017 worldwide.
Google and Airtel are expected to announce a deal once they agree on revenue sharing and receive regulatory clearance.
Source: ET
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