I moved to Georgia because of its low taxes and excellent business climate. It’s an ideal country for small businesses and IT. And not just that.
With Apple and Steam, there were no issues — I transferred my accounts and payouts here and continued working seamlessly. But with Google, it’s not so straightforward. Google has a dumb rule: “developer’s registered country == bank in that country.” You can’t just register an account and receive payouts. And that’s not the only problem.
Google has a list of countries they work with. The reasons why Georgia isn’t on that list remain unclear — legal, political, or just bureaucratic nonsense. Fact is, Google doesn’t allow payouts in Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan isn’t even on the list at all.
For over a year, I searched for a solution that was convenient, legal, and not too expensive.
In the end, I found a few options, but they all seemed complex and costly, requiring a ton of effort and time, especially compared to setting up an individual entrepreneur in Georgia. Still, it’s better to have some solution than to give up and lose income entirely.
I’m not alone in this. Together with another person from the developer community, I set up a legal entity, opened an account, transferred my apps there, and started earning revenue. Now we want to help other developers facing the same issues to publish on Google Play and beyond.
To publish an app and start earning, you need to: live in a country where Google Play Merchant is available, have documents from that country, a registered bank account, and formalized relations with tax authorities (e.g., registration as an individual entrepreneur or legal entity). Then, go through nine circles of hell with Google account registration and verification, and deal with the tax filling. Finally, once all these steps are completed, you can publish the app and start generating revenue. A massive waste of time, effort, and money.
Pubblo.app
First website at 17. And then it just took off...
20 years in web development, 10 years in game dev and mobile development.