It's been a while since we've seen any progress on the carrier billing front. Admittedly it's something of a niche feature - if you're using a smartphone there's a good chance that you also have a credit or debit card handy. But if for some reason you'd like to send your Play Store purchases to your wireless provider and pay them along with your bill at the end of the month, it's a handy option. Now it's available on a smattering of new carriers in Bulgaria, Estonia, Ireland, Lithuania, and Qatar.

Lithuania gets the best of this expansion, because both Bite and Tele2 carriers are offering the service. Tele2 is also the carrier offering direct billing in Estonia, and Ooredoo (which I'm sure sounds majestic and trustworthy in Arabic, but makes me think of that little bit with the marching soldiers from The Wizard of Oz) offers the same to residents of Qatar. Bulgaria gets the new option from Telenor. In all cases, they're the first carriers in their respective countries to offer Play Store billing.

Ireland's situation is a little more complicated. The carrier O2 has actually been removed from the Play Store support page, but that's only because the company has merged with 3, presumably so they could cut the character count in their logo in half. Since 3 already has carrier billing support, there's no functionality lost. Vodafone, which really should have been on this trolley a long time ago, has finally added support in the Republic of Ireland.

Source: Play Store support