By A new rumor’s surfaced regarding PayPal’s presence in the Android market. According to the street, PayPal could be gearing up to announce that Android users will be able to purchase apps in the Android market using their PayPal accounts. While many say Google Checkout isn’t a bad alternative, there’s a big problem with that: Google Checkout only support a limited amount of countries. Google’s already adding more countries to their list of developers who can publish paid apps and the list of users that can download them, but it’s still not enough (By contrast, Apple enables users and developers to make transactions in nearly 90 countries worldwide.)
PayPal enabling the Android market with their platform would be significant as it’d tremendously expand the amount of countries that can access paid apps. (For users, at least. Developers will probably still be unable to publish paid apps in the countries that Google has yet to support.)
So this is what a lot of people have been waiting for. Even those of us in regions where paid apps have been available since the beginning can’t wait to be able to use PayPal as an alternative. I guess we’ll have to wait until October 26th-27th where PayPal will be holding their developer conference in San Francisco to confirm.
[The Street via AC]
Speaking of PayPal…
No word on when this will happen though? It’s not like we haven’t heard this rumour before.
wait a second. So by Google adding Paypal support they enable most countries that couldnt see paid apps to be able to purchase paid apps? That would be great news!
@beaver…that’s not really what was said at all. Google will still have to enable paid apps in those countries.
@josh..”PayPal enabling the Android market with their platform would be significant as it’d tremendously expand the amount of countries that can access paid apps.”
So what does this mean then?
This would be awesome as paypal converts currencies :-D
….”PayPal enabling the Android market with their platform would be significant as it’d tremendously expand the amount of credit card fraud that can occur in their incredibly weak verification system.”
FYP
I cannot wait. I have no more plans to use Google Checkout. Not only that, when I bought an app using “Bill My Carrior” option, Google wanted access to my phone number (which I already thought they had)and the ability to send info back to Google even when no apps are open (clearly stated in the pop-out dialog). Now, I fell paranoid whenever I use my phone and something is using data in the background.
I was all up for Paypal until a few days ago when I went to update TortoiseSVN. You may wish to take a Google around as I did and find out how Paypal has frozen a number of open-source developers’ accounts and HELD ALL OF THEIR MONEY for 180 days due to their interpretation of their NPO regulations. Everybody who reads this please take two minutes to just look up some instances of it and remember that Android and open source should be going hand-in-hand. Obviously sometimes you’re going to have to use it for one thing or another, and I’m not preaching here, but it really made me think.
And by the way Phandroid…if an image is very small, leave it alone! [PayPal logo]
”PayPal enabling the Android market with their platform would be significant as it’d tremendously expand the amount of countries that can access paid apps.” I SOOO HOPE THIS IS TRUE!!!! I WANNA BUY APPS IN MY COUNTRY!!!!
google checkout is TERRIBLE for one reason, a $1 app costs about $2.50 in the UK because there is a £1.25 charge per transaction due to the foreign exchange…
Mark
hope it’s true, it would mean i’m no longer stuck with buying €20 prepaid cards whenever i want to buy a single $0.50 app.
I clicked through to this just so I could leave a comment like Simon. I can’t imagine that ANYONE who truly understands Paypal’s terms of service would choose to have a Paypal account. I’ve been a victim of their account locking, and will never use them again. What to read about it? Google “paypal locked account”.