Currently, when purchasing apps or making in-app purchases on our smartphones we have a few different options. We can charge our credit card, use Google Play Credit, Paypal, and billing your carrier. Since the Google started offering the bill my carrier option it was only available on smartphone devices-not anymore. The bill my carrier option will soon be available for tablets as well.
Our smartphones are always connected to a carrier, and so Google saw fit to add a bill my carrier option to the Play Store. This means that when you’re looking at a paid app, you can buy it and pay for it later as it is added to your wireless bill. This makes it easier for people who may not have the money to pay for the app at the time, or maybe they just don’t want to charge their card for 99 cents. However, the option has always been limited to your smartphone and not on tablets.
This is due to the obvious idea that your smartphone is connected directly to your carrier, though your Google Play account is connected across all platforms. Using that idea of connectivity, Google has announced that they will be opening up the carrier billing option to tablets.
Since your Google Play account is the same on all of your devices, the tablets have access to your smartphone information. That means that your tablets have always had access to the credit cards or other payment methods you have stored on your smartphone. However, the one form of payment that hasn’t appeared in the tablet version of the Play Store is carrier billing. Soon that will be available, and not only to tablets that come with a data plan. This means that whether your tablet is a WiFi only, or carrier data connected you will be able to charge your carrier for paid apps or in-app purchases. Then when you get your monthly bill, the charges will be added instead of having to pay at the time of purchase.
Google has not released any details as to when we can see these changes to the Play Store. Though there was plenty more to talk about at I/O 2014, make sure to check out all our articles surrounding the event.