The Tinder dating service launched a new payment system – so far only on Android devices. Users now enter the bank card data directly in the application. After that, the application not only saves their payment information, but also deprives users of the opportunity to return to payment through Google Play.
“This is a huge difference,” Shakhtar told the agency. “This is an incredibly profitable business that brings Google billions of dollars.”
According to him, changes in the work of Tinder will not have a serious impact, but other developers, for example, creators of mobile games, can also take advantage of this experience. “Many companies will potentially try to experiment with this,” the analyst believes.
“We are always trying to provide opportunities that improve the user experience, and providing different payment options is an example,” said Bloomberg Match representative Justin Sacco. Google did not respond to an agency request.
After the publication of Shakhtar’s research on Thursday, the shares of the Match Group company, which owns Tinder, rose by 5%, the agency writes. The stock price of Alphabet, which owns Google, has not changed much. A Match spokesman declined to answer the question whether the company plans to change the payment method for users with Apple devices.
Apple and Google launched application marketplace in 2008. Third-party developers are forced to give them up to 30% of revenue for selling applications through their stores, Bloomberg said. At the same time, the application market should grow to $ 157 billion by 2022, according to data from the App Annie analytical platform.
But as the market grows, so does the resistance, the agency writes. Tinder is not the first company that refused to share revenue with Google or Apple. In March, Spotify complained to Google in the European Commission. The company said that Google is violating antitrust laws, charging high "tax" from competitors. As a result, developers are forced to either raise prices for users – but then they lose out on the cost of Apple's applications, such as Apple Music – or cover these costs to the detriment of themselves.
Netflix also stopped allowing users to renew through the App Store. And the company Epic Games last year announced that it will not distribute through Google Play Fortnite – one of the most popular video games in the world. As Bloomberg writes, joining Tinder to this movement "can cause a domino effect" and shake up the billion-dollar industry dominated by Google and Apple.
Chief editor of the blog – Erika J. Wells .
