Here is a somewhat surprising move by Google: starting today, the company will accept PayPal as a payment option in its Play store in twelve countries, including the U.S., Germany and Canada, as well as Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom.
For Google to work with what is essentially a competitor to its Wallet service definitely comes as a surprise. But at the end of the day, the company wants to get users to buy as many apps as possible and besides taking credit cards, prepaid Google Play cards and carrier billing, PayPal simply remains a popular payment choice among users.
Still, this move surely can be seen as somewhat of an admission that some users don’t just want to use Google’s own checkout service — and may even actively stay away from it because they don’t want to give Google even more personal information.
While users will be able to buy apps and other digital content with PayPal, the service can’t be used to buy devices and accessories from the Play store yet.
Google also expanded its carrier billing program today from seven countries to 24. Among the new countries are Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan and in many of these countries, Google is working with at least two carriers to offer this service. While Google also offers this feature in partnership with most of the major U.S. wireless services, carrier billing isn’t quite as popular here as it is in other countries, likely because people are used to making payments with their credit cards they have on file with Google, Apple and other vendors already.
Author: Frederic Lardinois
Source: TechCrunch