Back in August, South Korea made an amendment to its Telecommunications Business Act which prohibits Apple and Google from forcing developers to process all in-app purchases through their billing systems. Instead, they should be allowed to use third party services.
While most of the new bill went into effect by the middle of this month, both tech monoliths have yet to allow users access to third-party billing services. Now Reuters reports that South Korea has told them both they have half a month to present compliance plans for the new law.
South Korea makes it a date
Additionally, the Korea Communications Commission also plans to draft an enforcement ordinance to ensure that both companies comply with the law once it fully comes into effect. This should apparently be completed within the next six months.
Both Apple and Google have been facing increased pressure to change their respective billing system practices over the past few months. Both companies take up to a 30% cut of developers’ revenue through in-app purchases, which understandably has a few of them slightly frustrated.
At the beginning of this month, Apple amended its in-app purchase policy to allow “reader” apps like Netflix and Spotify to link out to external billing systems, but that doesn’t mean much to non-reader app developers.
Google also recently found itself in hot water after it came out that it had offered Netflix a sweetened deal on its in-app purchase tax to dissuade it from leaving the Play Store. Furthermore, it was discovered that Google only needs a 6% cut on in-app purchases to break even on revenue sharing, which, to the outsider, looks a tad greedy.
