AFAI, many Android phones have Osaifu-Kaitai support outside of the US just sitting there. I think if there is a key generation fee, it's at setup time of a wallet and not just physical phone's existence.
I rooted my US model Pixel 9 Pro on my Japan trip last year to enable it. :D Literally a boolean in a config file.
This is an interesting find and the author's ideas make sense to me. I can't confirm them of course, this is all probably hidden behind legal documents, but I've updated the article to a link with this repo. Thanks for the link!
I rooted my US model Pixel 9 Pro on my Japan trip last year to enable it. :D Literally a boolean in a config file.
https://github.com/kormax/osaifu-keitai-google-pixel
(The author's write up has more theories on why Google blocks it on non-Japan SKUs)