Finally it is here: carrier billing for Google Play Store is now available for Malaysia. Frankly speaking, this is a long time coming for Android users in our shores. However, it is only available for DiGi customers at the moment.
In general, this allows DiGi customers to add their purchases from Google Play Store such as paid apps, magazines, books, and in-app purchases into their DiGi postpaid bill. The direct billing capability for Google Play Store is also available for prepaid customers but for them, the payment is deducted from their prepaid balance.
The telco believes that the direct billing will benefit plenty of their customers out there that are not willing to user their credit cards for online purchases. At the same time, DiGi’s Chief Marketing Officer, Christian Thrane stated this move should benefit Malaysian app developers and content creators as local users will now have more convenient options to pay for their contents.
As for Google itself, today’s announcement is seen as part of continues partnership with DiGi which has previously resulted in the creation of YouTube Internet Top Up last year – said to be the first such package in the world. For now, it is not known if Google will extend Google Play Store direct billing to other telcos but hey…time will tell.
Meanwhile, Android is not the only operating system that has direct billing capability with DiGi as the telco also offers the same option for Windows Phone and BlackBerry as well. To learn more about Google Play Store direct billing on DiGi, head on to digi.my/GooglePlay.
