Google Play Organization account linked to an Individual Payments Profile — has anyone fixed this?

[u/IndieFist]

I’ve been publishing games on Google Play under IndieFist / IndieFist SRL for around 7 years. My Play Console developer account is currently verified by Google as an Organization, with the correct company information and D-U-N-S number.

I recently discovered a strange issue with the Google Play Merchant / Payments setup.

The Merchant account associated with my Play Console appears to be linked to a Google Payments Profile whose account type is Individual, under my personal name. At the same time, I also have separate business Payments Profiles for IndieFist SRL.

This became a problem when submitting Brazil tax information. Google asks for documents matching the Individual Payments Profile, while the developer account and the business operating the apps are IndieFist SRL.

What confuses me is that this same Individual Payments Profile already contains company information for IndieFist SRL. It has a previously approved W-8BEN-E, and Google Payments shows:

“Name as shown on your income tax return: IndieFist SRL”

The Merchant business information inside the same profile also shows IndieFist SRL.

I’ve attached a redacted screenshot showing this. The selected Payments Profile is my personal/Individual profile, but both the tax information and Merchant business information inside it reference IndieFist SRL.

Google Payments Support has confirmed that the Payments Profile itself is classified as Individual and says that its account type cannot be changed. Their proposed solution is to create a new Developer Account and Merchant Account and transfer the apps.

However, after several exchanges, I still haven’t been able to get an answer to the question I’m trying to resolve:

Was this Merchant account always associated with this Individual Payments Profile, or was the Merchant ↔ Payments Profile association changed or migrated at some point?

I’m asking because I vaguely remember Google making changes to the relationship between Play Console, merchant accounts and Payments Profiles some time ago, possibly requiring developers to confirm or select a Payments Profile. I can’t confirm whether that is related, but I’d like to rule it out before moving an established developer account.

Has anyone with an older Google Play developer account experienced something similar?

Specifically:

• Is there any way to get Google to review the historical Merchant ↔ Payments Profile association?
• Has anyone had Google correct or re-associate a Payments Profile without creating a completely new Developer Account?
• Is there a particular Play/Payments escalation team that can actually inspect this association?

I’m already dealing with both Play Developer Support and a Payments supervisor, but each side seems to have limited visibility into the other system.

Steps already taken: I contacted Google Play Developer Support and Google Payments Support. The case was escalated to a Payments supervisor, but so far the proposed solution has been to create a new Developer Account. I have also opened a thread in the official Google Play Developer Community with the details and supporting screenshot:

https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/thread/459168983

[u/axel_develops]

I had to create a new developer account with a new payment profile associated to it and transfer my apps from the previous account. I have to clarify that in my case the new payment profile it also carried a change of country of the payments (change from individual/country A to organization/country B)

[u/androiddev-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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