Google Play carrier billing now supports eight more carriers from seven countries around the world, as revealed by the Google Play Store support pages. The latest expansion of the feature brought support for Boost Mobile in the United States, while all of the other additions include wireless carriers in Europe and Asia. More specifically, Google Play carrier billing is now available with Orange in Luxembourg, Telekom in Slovenia, Vodafone in Indonesia, Beeline in Kazakhstan, and Telenor Pakistan in Pakistan. Finally, the service is now also supported by Viettel and Vietnamobile in Vietnam, the Mountain View-based tech company revealed.
Just like the name of the feature suggests, Google Play carrier billing is a service that allows users to pay for apps and other content on the Google Play Store directly through their wireless carriers. Instead of linking one’s Google Account with a credit or debit card, users are able to connect their profiles with their phone number, then pay for any content they purchase on the Google Play Store through monthly bills sent by their mobile service provider. The service itself could lead to somewhat higher charges due to transaction fees depending on your country and the exact wireless carrier you’re using, but it still serves as a viable alternative to paying for digital goods on the Google Play Store, especially if you don’t want or aren’t able to use a credit or debit card for any reason.
The latest expansion of Google Play carrier billing marks the second time the service rolled out to more users this year, having previously debuted with Vodafone and Airtel in India back in January. While Google never promoted the service in an aggressive manner seeing how it usually led to somewhat higher charges for users, the Alphabet-owned Internet giant is still seemingly adamant to continue including more wireless carriers to its program in an effort to potentially reach out to a larger number of customers and consequently increase the amount of revenue generated by the Google Play Store. With that in mind, an update on the availability of the service will likely follow later this year.