Each one of those ton of things have been solved by Apple, Samsung and BlackBerry in many of the countries Google doesn't support. They can copy what any one of these 3 did if they really wanted to help developers.
Then they can do the same thing. It's a non-argument, my favorite of the HN tropes.
Obviously PayPal, which is way smaller than Google, was able to pay to this developer.
You can't patent "compliance with the law", and you can't pass a law that requires licensing of a patent to be in compliance. So no, the "process" of being legally allowed to sell items in a country is not and cannot be patented.