Google wants you to purchase content from Google Play, and they’re trying to make it as easy as possible. Google has recognised that two-thirds of purchases from Google Play occur outside of the United States, and they’re moving to help increase sales in those countries by offering more ways to pay. Today on the Android Developers blog, Google has announced they are extending Carrier billing and Google Play gift cards to more countries as well as offering PayPal as a means of payment in 12 countries.
PayPal is obviously the most exciting one here, with Google long pushing the Google Wallet platform as the primary method of purchasing content in Google Play. But that’s ending today, for at least 12 countries, with Google offering the option to customers in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, United States and the United Kingdom.
Unfortunately as you can see, Australia is not one of the initial countries to be included in using PayPal as a method of payment in Google Play, but we hope it will come soon.
More options are always better, but we know about that, because we have Google Play Gift Cards, but so do more countries as of today. Google has extended Google Play Gift Cards to a total of 13 countries, including Japan and Germany.
Google has also introduced Carrier Billing to more carriers in more countries, Optus customers recently gained this ability, but as of today, customers in seven further countries will be able to access this option including Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan.
We love options, we have Google Play Gift Cards, and they’re pretty well available in most places – although it seems that there’s a clamouring in Australia for a $10 card – and we have Carrier Billing on two of our major telco providers. We’ll have to wait a little longer for PayPal, but hopefully not too long.
Would you use PayPal to purchase content from Google Play?
