Android Developers put up some interesting Google Play Store statistics just yesterday – that sales of apps and games are up 300 percent over the past year AND that two-thirds of Google Play purchases occur outside the U.S. With international sales continuing to rise, they want to make it as easy and convenient as possible to make purchases, so they are adding the ability to pay for your Google Store purchases via PayPal. Starting now, you can opt to make payments with PayPal in twelve countries, including the U.S., Germany, and Canada.
When you go to make a purchase on Google Play in these countries, PayPal will now be an option in your Google Wallet. After you choose the PayPal option, it will ask you to login to your PayPal account to finish the purchase – just like other websites that allow payments via PayPal. This is just Google’s way of adding another convenient way for us customers to spend our money – but seriously, PayPal is one of the most secure ways to make purchases and eliminates the need for using a separate credit card by giving those that prefer using PayPal the option to extend that to the Google Play Store.
Carrier billing is also another option that Google offers at the major carriers in Canada – the option to bill their Google Play Store purchases directly onto their carrier billings each month, so adding PayPal availability simply increases your options as a subscriber. Google has extended their carrier billing to seven additional countries, bringing the support to twenty-four countries.
When the new Samsung Galaxy S5 was announced, one of the purposes of providing the fingerprint scanner was not only as a secure method to get into your Galaxy S5, but also promised the ability to use your fingerprint scan to make PayPal purchases. However, so far it looks as though that convenience only extends to purchasing Samsung Apps – it has not been extended to the Google Play Store…we hope that situation soon changes and Samsung will open it up to using PayPal at places other than the Samsung Store.
Please let us know on our Google+ Page if you look forward to using PayPal to make purchases in the Google Play Store…as always, we would love to hear from you.