In Indonesia, you can now purchase Android apps on Google Play with carrier billing

It’s still always a hassle when you want to monetize your Android apps in Indonesia. The country only has 8 million credit card owners – that’s just 3.2 percent of the entire population – and the biggest Android app store in the archipelago is Google Play, which only accepted credit cards for payment. But that’s all changed this week, with local telco Indosat announcing that it is now providing direct carrier billing to its users to buy apps from the Play store.

The telco says that it will gradually roll out the carrier billing payment scheme over the next week, so not all users will be able to purchase Android apps using Indosat credit just yet. Users can do this by setting up the “payment options” inside the Google Play store and choosing “enable Indosat billing”.

Note that all payments via Indosat will charge users an additional 10 percent VAT over the displayed price on Google Play. So you’ll be paying US$1.10 if you’re buying an app or in-app purchase priced at one buck.

The rest of Google Play’s system works as usual. You can still get a refund on a purchased app even when you pay using Indosat credit.

Indosat has 54.3 million subscribers. Last year, the company revealed that it has only 1.6 million Android users out of its eight million smartphone users. Although the total subscribers number hasn’t increased significantly in the past year, there’s a good chance that a large number of feature phone users have since upgraded to Android smartphones.

Indosat is the first telco in Indonesia to implement carrier billing in Google Play. There are other third-party app stores in the country, such as XL Axiata’s Gudang Aplikasi, Telkomsel and SingTel’s WePlay, Baidu’s MoboMarket, and Altermyth’s Nampol.

The Windows Phone Store and BlackBerry World allow users to pay via direct billing from various telcos in Indonesia.

See: 4 alternative Android app stores in Indonesia