Android Market to Include Carrier Billing Soon

Recently, Mountain View-based Internet giant Google has announced a series of changes made to the Android Market Developer Distribution Agreement (DDA), changes that involve the future introduction of new payment options for the Android Market. According to the company, the upcoming changes should include carrier billing, and are expected to be welcomed by all Android developers.

Currently, T-Mobile USA is the only wireless carrier that offers its users the possibility to have their Android Market purchases included in their monthly carrier bill. Other Android mobile phone owners need to use Google's Checkout service when purchasing applications from the software portal. However, in case Google indeed added more wireless services providers to the list of those offering carrier billing, many users would find it very useful, as this would eliminate using their credit cards for application purchases.

Here's what Google announced via a recent post on the Android Developers Blog:

This is in preparation for some work we’re doing on introducing new payment options, which we think developers will like.
In the spirit of transparency, we wanted to highlight the changes:
- In Section 13.1, “authorized carriers” have been added as an indemnified party.
- Section 13.2 is new in its entirety, covering indemnity for payment processors for claims related to tax accrual.
These new terms apply immediately to anyone joining Android Market as a new publisher. Existing publishers have been notified of this change via email; they have up to 30 days to sign into the Android Market developer console to accept the new terms.

All changes made to the Android Market Developer Distribution Agreement (DDA) have about 30 days before they start being applied, which suggests that Google might announce the introduction of carrier billing sometime before the end of August. One thing that still remains to be seen is whether the changes would be aimed only at the Market in the US, or users in other countries around the world would also benefit from the new options.

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