![\"Google](\"https:\/\/www.frslabs.com\/frsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Website-Blog-Google-Playstore-KYC.png\")
<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nThis morning I met their latest masterpiece. A phone call asking that one of our Directors be physically present at our office so that an agent could take a selfie with them. Not to inspect a server. Not to ask a single question about the business. A selfie. Proof of life, compliance edition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let me explain how a small app on the Google Play Store got us here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The “high-risk” app in question<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Our app is not a lending app. It is not a social media platform hoovering up the private lives of millions. It is not a threat to the sovereignty of the nation, however hard one squints. Its a simple face attendance app<\/a> that runs entirely locally on the mobile device with privacy first design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are the numbers that apparently keep Google and Billdesk compliance teams awake at night:<\/p>\n\n\n\n We did not build it to get rich or go viral. We built it as an engineering exercise: to test scale and security on a live consumer app, to keep pace with the constant changes in the Google Play ecosystem, and to earn real experience shipping and maintaining apps on Google Play and the Apple App Store.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That experience has value. When an enterprise RFP asks whether we have integrated with and released apps on both stores, we answer from practice, not from a slide. This is exactly the kind of small, sensible experiment a healthy startup ecosystem should encourage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since 1 January 2026, Google has required new merchant accounts selling in India to verify directly with BillDesk, its partner for RBI’s cross-border payment aggregator rules (Google Payments Help<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The fine print is the best part. Google says BillDesk must run its own independent KYC, separate from any verification you have already completed with Google. So you prove who you are to Google. Then you prove it again to BillDesk. Two front doors, same house, same people living inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We did it anyway. A complex application. Incorporation documents, director IDs, addresses, bank details, and a stack of supporting papers that would make a home loan business correspondent blush (and say enough!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n On 17 October, the reply arrived. Our application had been “assigned to our representative for physical verification”, who would coordinate a visit and complete our KYC during it. So, we are assuming that the rest of the documents are fully accepted and there is just one more sealed and signed doc (Our MOA and AOA) that needs to be handed over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This morning came the call. Please ensure a Director is present, for a selfie wtih the Billdesk Agent. I said it was preposterous and sought the regulation on this. The call center agent simply said this was Billdesk’s process and we need to comply in order for our application to be approved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let me be fair here as as i did my research. RBI’s Payment Aggregator Directions of September 2025 do require Contact Point Verification. RBI defines it as physical verification of the merchant’s address or place of business (RBI Master Direction<\/a>). But again, RBI also asks organisations to apply the due diligence proportional to the risk on the ground. Not a one size fits all compliance hammer so it can slam everything that looks like a nail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Address is a reasonable thing to check which we have already submitted through COI, GST, MSME, Bank Account as proofs. Still, an address can be verified and our registered office can be visited, and ours will happily receive guests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What the definition does not say is that a Director must be summoned to stand next to an agent for a selfie. Somewhere between the RBI circular and this morning’s phone call, “verify the place of business” became “produce a founder and say cheese”. Nobody wrote that down. It simply happened, the way most bad processes in India do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The same RBI Directions even describe a separate due diligence route for small merchants with annual turnover up to \u20b940 lakh (Source<\/a>). The regulator, at least on paper, recognises that a corner shop and a conglomerate are different things. Our annual Play revenue would struggle to buy a decent laptop. Yet we are processed exactly like a gaming company or a lending app with millions of users and crores flowing through it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is the heart of it. Risk is supposed to be applied proportionately at the time of KYC verification and due diligence. Here it is applied uniformly, which is a polite way of saying it is not applied at all. A checklist is followed by an online process, and the checklist does not care who you are or have the basic intelligence to triage the form based on the risk of the application in evaluation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A short scroll through LinkedIn, X and developer forums shows we are in large and growing company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Slowly but surely, we are losing patience (not money) over bad and ridiculous processes that make doing business in India even harder for those who are considering setting up a business. Both are bad news for a country that wants a trillion-dollar digital economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Complaining is easy, so here is the free consulting for Billdesk and Google. None of it requires new law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The saddest part is not the selfie with one of our Directors that is mandated for the Google Play KYC process, it is how quietly we have all agreed that this is normal. Founders grumble in WhatsApp groups, comply, and move on (including us). So much for ease of doing business. If anything, this is the opposite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We will not be sending a Director to pose for a photograph that proves nothing a document has not already proved. This is just a matter of principle, taking a stand. Perhaps it is time to pull the plug on the app altogether. We will do so when Google bots automatically blocks us and that will be the end of our App on Google Play. It would be pretty sad that we have to announce to our Users that we are shutting the lights off on an App that they love using.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If and when we do so, Google and BillDesk deserve credit (if common sense does not return by then). They have found a remarkably efficient way to move creative entrepreneurs out of the Play Store, and that is one metric where they are clearly over-delivering. And I sincerely hope and wish that the regulators and policy makers take a note of this process that is affecting millions of small merchants collecting payments from international customers legitimately through the Google Play store channel connected to legitimate business and business bank accounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWelcome to the verification marathon<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The law asks for an address. BillDesk asks for a Selfie.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
We are not the only ones<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What would actually help<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Ease of doing business, in reverse gear<\/h2>\n\n\n\n