Eligibility and requirements

As Google stated, the company aims to help developers scale their services beyond mobile and across all the form factors that are important to users.

“Through these integrations, we enable new discovery and re-engagement opportunities for developers to accelerate their overall growth on Play and offer a service fee of 15% during the program term, all to help developers deliver premium experiences,” Google said.

But in order to participate in the program and receive a reduced fee of up to 15%, the application must meet the following requirements:

• Primary app offering of premium video, audio, or books content (not user generated)
• Over 100,000 monthly active installs on Google Play
• High quality user experience with strong Google Play rating
• Developer account in good standing
• Integration of specific Google platforms and APIs based on type of media content

Also, additional requirements may apply to the application depending on the type of media content:

Video apps

• First and foremost, the app should offer living room-first video programs such as movies, TV shows, live sports, and news
• Android TV, Google TV, Cast platforms with cross device playback and sign-in integrations
• Smart recommendations to easily find content, easier sign-up and sign-in, and enhanced discovery

Audio apps

• Premium music and audio content via subscription
• WearOS, Android Auto, AndroidTV, and Google Cast platforms
• Content discovery and continued listening across devices

Book apps

• Premium books, audiobooks, and comics
• Tablet and foldable optimizations, Entertainment Space. WearOS and Android Auto for audiobooks apps
• Improved reading experience and content discovery and re-engagement throughout Entertainment Space

However, this special program will be available only for developers whose revenue from the app exceeds $1 million. If your app fits all the requirements, you can apply by clicking here.

Why it is important

In November 2020, the developer of Fortnite, Epic Games, circumvented a 30% fee on the App Store and Google Play, and the game was instantly removed from the app stores. This situation once again raised the issue of high fees on these platforms.

Epic Games created an entire coalition against platform owners and exorbitant fees, which was joined by Tinder, Spotify, Deezer, and dozens of smaller developers. As a result, the platform holders had to make concessions and lower the fee. Play Media Experience is the result of this confrontation.

According to the regulator, non-cash transactions account for 44.3% of total card transactions of the Ukrainian banks. These are 2.8 bln transactions, which is 5% more than in the previous year. The volume of non-cash transactions has exceeded UAH 2 tln. These indicators have increased by 27.2% and 38.5%, respectively. In addition, the NBU published statistics for the past 8 years.

The largest share, 1.1 bln or 51.7%, of payments accounted for retail networks. Thus, the Ukrainians have spent over UAH 902 bln, and most of all, online.

• online payments — UAH 312 bln;
• card to card transfers — UAH 300.7 bln;
• payments in retail networks — UAH 267.8 bln;
• transactions through ATMs and payment terminals — UAH 22.2 bln.

Transactions worth UAH 26 bln using the Ukrainian bank cards were conducted abroad.

The NBU informs about the increased payment cards popularity. Their number has increased by 1.3%, i.e. up to 60.6M. Among them, 36.6M cards are active that is 5.1% higher than in the beginning of 2018. Contactless payments are available in 3.6M cards, but this segment showed the highest growth with 31.4% increase.

MasterCard takes leading positions in the market. This payment system boasts 24.9M cards, while Visa has 11.3M cards, and national payment system Prostir with 0.4M cards. By the volume and quantity of transactions, MasterCard also takes the lead with 70.2% of the market per each indicator. The largest card issuers are PrivatBank, Oschadbank and Raiffeisen Bank, however, the details are not disclosed.

Moreover, the quantity of payment terminals is on the rise in Ukraine (+ 12.1% – up to 282,000 pcs.), while ATMs are becoming less popular (− 0.7% – to 185,000 pcs.). Currently, there are 6.7 payment terminals per 1 thousand people. This indicator is the highest in Kyiv, i.e. 17.8 pcs. per 1,000 people. The NBU also notes that three fourth of the Ukrainian payment terminals (78.7% or 2,073,000 pcs.) support contactless payments, including ApplePay and GooglePay.

#1. What is it?

Google.PayOnline allows to pay for goods online in just two clicks — users don’t have to manually enter card details. All details are retrieved from Google account to which users can link their cards.Google launched this technology in the U.S. in October 2017, known as Pay with Google. Upon its launch the service partnered with such companies as Instacart, Yelp!, Doordash, and others. The company promised to expand its partnership base to include Airbnb, Deliveroo, and few other services.