Nokia has again opened up its Ovi store for purchases of paid apps through credit cards irrespective of service provider network in India. The company had closed this option August last year after getting into an exclusive deal with RCom under which the handset manufacturer agreed to give exclusive content (paid apps) only to the users of the later.
A Nokia spokesperson confirmed this to ‘The Mobile Indian’ saying: “We have started the beta version for payment through Indian credit cards, the commercial version will be live soon”.
After the RCom agreement, users of other network were allowed to download free apps only while RCom users had the facility to purchase the paid apps as well, for which they had the option of operator billing, i.e. they could later pay for the apps through their postpaid bill or can get the amount deducted from their prepaid balance.
With the end of exclusive agreement between the two companies, subscribers on other operators’ network can also use their credit cards to make the purchase as was the case prior to agreement with RCom.
The spokesperson also confirmed that they are already in talks with more operators for operator billing partnerships. However, she refused to give names or timelines for these partnerships to come through.