The Madras High Court on April 24 prohibited Google from delisting the apps operated by Matrimony.com from Play Store even if the developer is not in compliance with Google Play's new billing policy, according to an interim order reviewed by MediaNama. The injunction is valid until June 1, 2023. Google Play's latest billing policy, User Choice Billing, announced by the company this January, allows developers to feature a third-party billing system but only alongside Google's billing system. And developers will have to pay Google an 11 to 26 percent commission if users pay through the third-party billing system and a 15 to 30 percent commission if users pay through Google's billing system. The matchmaking company, which owns the popular Bharat Matrimony, won the injunction by arguing that Google is in violation of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007, and the payment aggregator guidelines issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). "It's obvious why you have to take Google to court because Google is forcing Indian digital startups to pay 15 to 30 percent of the revenue to them. Currently, we use the other payment gateways like Razorpay, PayU, CCAvenue, or Paytm and we pay on average 1.5 percent commission. Google is simply taxing companies." — Matrimony.com founder and CEO Murugavel Janakiraman to MediaNama Matrimony.com has asked the court to declare the new billing policy illegal and unenforceable. Why does this matter: Indian startups are objecting to Google Play's billing policy as it charges developers a high commission. But while…
