Here in the US, developers take it being able to charge for their work in the Play Store for granted, but elsewhere in the world, things aren’t so easy. Not only is it frustrating for developers not being able to charge for their apps or games in the Play Store, but it creates a poor experience for users. In a lot of cases, users are asked to head to another website, pay for the app through PayPal and use a code to gain access to the rest of the app, or use another App Store altogether. Thankfully, Google has been steadily making progress to turn this around and now, 8 more countries have been added to the list that can charge for apps.
These 8 new countries are Greece, Luxembourg, Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine in Europe and Turkey and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East and last but not least, Vietnam in the Far East. Vietnam is of course the home to Flappy Bird, as the developer behind the five-minute craze was located there. Not having the ability to charge for his app didn’t seem to affect his income though, as it was reported he made a good deal of money off of ad revenue. However, that’s not always the case for a lot of developers and ads really can put some people off, despite the fact they’re a necessary evil when dealing with free content.
These new countries will be able to charge for their apps or games in their local currency, which is of course the Euro for a lot of them, but the Ukraine will be using the Hryvnia, Romania the Leu, Saudi Arabia the Riyal, Turkey the Lira and of course Vietnam will be using Dong for their payments. This has been a long time coming, but it’s nice to see Google make progress with this nonetheless. Developers now thinking of getting their apps into Google’s store will have to sign-up (which incurs a small registration fee, $25 here in the States) and depending on which country you’re from, you’ll be paid a little differently. These new countries now brings the total that can offer paid content in the Play Store to 45.