After Idea Cellular, Google partners with Airtel and Vodafone

Six months back, Google partnered with Idea Cellular to bring carrier based payments to the country, aiming easy payment process for purchasing apps and other services. Thanks to the positive response, Google has announced two more extensions - Airtel and Vodafone.

When Google announced the new partnership at a Google Playtime developer event in Gurgaon, many attendees took to Twitter to express their 140-character-limited response.

Big annoucement by @GooglePlay India team, Direct Carrier billing coming with Vodafone and Airtel. #googleplaytime pic.twitter.com/TOjdTQD9jI

— Anuj Tandon (@Anuj_Tandon) October 19, 2016

Airtel and Vodafone carrier billing coming soon on Google Play India. Gaming apps would really benefit #googleplaytime — Himanshu Gupta (@HalfRebel) October 19, 2016

Direct Carrier Billing on Google Play in India - the hard part over - contracts signed with Big 2 @purnimakochikar clarifies #GooglePlaytime

— Anuj Tandon (@Anuj_Tandon) October 19, 2016

Bringing the two biggest telecom operators of India together, the partnership will bring the easy payment option to over 300 million combined subscribers using their services.

Considering that many Indians are still wary of sharing their credit/debit card information on mobile devices, the carrier billing feature is an alternative to the tedious card payment system. Instead of paying through a credit card or a debit card, the price of the purchase will directly be either added to your bill for postpaid users or cut from the balance amount for prepaid users.

It also boosts download for free apps, but trumps premium paid apps right out of the picture.

There are also other payments systems in the market created by Google rivals, Apple Pay & Samsung Pay. However, they use third-party services, where security of user information often becomes a concern.

With this partnership with the leading telecom operators, Google assures a secure way to buy digital content in the smartphone by keeping all the account information personal.