14 DAY TRIAL // Announced earlier this year, the User Choice Billing, also referred to as UCB, is big news for the future of payment options bundled with mobile operating systems.
As its name suggests, UCB is supposed to provide users with more options on how they want to pay for services purchased on their mobile devices.
And thanks to this partnership, users no longer have to rely on Google Play to subscribe to Spotify Premium but use Spotify’s very own platform for the whole thing.
“Earlier this week, we began rolling out the first test implementation of UCB to Spotify subscribers in select markets around the world. Going forward, Android users will soon be able to choose how to pay for their Spotify subscription in the way that best suits them. You can see an example of the user journey below. In the coming weeks, we’ll expand our test to even more markets,” Spotify announced.
The whole thing works as straightforwardly as possible.
When users decide to subscribe to Spotify Premium, they are redirected to a payment interface that allows them to decide how they want to pay. The available options are Spotify and Google Play, while the payment methods are credit or debit cards and PayPal.
Google explains that the early response to the program has been very positive, so now it’s ready to expand the availability to more regions.
“With strong interest from developers around the world, in September we opened participation in the pilot to all developers of non-gaming apps. We provided more detail about the eligibility, requirements—including interim UX guidelines—and announced that user choice billing will initially be available to users in Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, and the European Economic Area. Today we are excited to announce that based on the positive response and initial feedback from developers and users, we are expanding the pilot to users in the United States, Brazil, and South Africa,” it says.