The search giant is “unfairly privileging Google Pay” by giving it prominent placement in its Play app store, and by pre-installing it on smartphones that use the Android OS, the complaint alleges. It also claims the firm is abusing its market dominance by requiring app makers listed in the Play store to use its inbuilt payment and billing system, which in turn prioritizes Google Pay. Google said it expects the watchdog will conclude the service “operates in an extremely competitive environment.” (The Logic, TechCrunch)

Talking point: Google Pay was already facing regulatory and market challenges in India. In July, the National Payments Corporation of India (NCPI) announced plans to limit the number of transactions for individual services on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the infrastructure underpinning both private- and public-sector settlement apps. The new rules imposed a 50 per cent cap, retroactive to April, which falls to 33 per cent over two years; last month, Google Pay handled about 40 per cent of the two billion UPI transactions, worth a combined ₹3.86 trillion ($68 billion). Walmart’s PhonePe is the current market leader, but last week, WhatsApp—which had 400 million users in India as of July 2019—received NCPI approval to launch its own payment service. Elsewhere, Google is facing a major antitrust lawsuit in the U.S. over its search business, and an EU investigation over its Fitbit acquisition.