Google said on Wednesday that an Indian court directive ordering the company to charge a lower 4 percent in-app payment on Disney’s streaming service in the country was a temporary measure pending court proceedings.
Disney in India has gone to court in what is the latest and most high-profile challenge to Google’s policy of imposing a “service fee” of 11 to 26 percent on in-app payments. The service charge was introduced after an antitrust directive ruled against Google’s previous fee of 15 to 30 percent and forced Google to allow third-party payments.
An Indian court said Tuesday that Google should receive a lower fee of 4 percent for Disney+ Hotstar’s in-app purchases and cannot remove the Disney app from its Indian app store, in a significant challenge to Google’s payments business model.
“The order is provisional in nature, and the temporary 4 percent figure is simply a fee that the developer will pay to Google each month while these legal proceedings unfold,” Google said in a statement.
Google will be required to comply with court directives until rescinded or modified.
Disney, which runs the popular streaming app Disney+ Hotstar in India, has challenged Google’s new billing system in a court in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. His lawyers had argued that Google was threatening to remove the Hotstar app if it failed to comply with the new payment system.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
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