Google Play Adds PayPal in Bid to Boost Sales (May 19, 2014)
While Google and PayPal are competitors in the mobile wallet space, the companies are cooperating on an initiative to enable Google Play purchases to be paid for with PayPal in 12 countries, including the U.S., Canada and Germany. Google announced the move in a blog post last week, calling the PayPal integration a way to “provide users with a frictionless payment experience.”
But the move also is a bid to encourage as many users as possible to make app purchases over Google Play—including those wary of giving Google their financial information. PayPal also holds the edge in user awareness of mobile payments, outranking Google Wallet—along with PayPass, V.me and Isis—in a recent comScore study.
In addition to PayPal, Google Play also accepts credit, debit and prepaid cards, Google Play gift cards and direct carrier billing. Google also announced last week that it would expand the direct carrier billing option to seven more countries, for a total of 24.
For PayPal, the deal adds yet another major name to the ever-growing list of PayPal-accepting merchants. The company aggressively has been expanding its presence as a payment option both in stores and online. Most recently, PayPal announced acceptance deals with m-POS providers TabTill and TouchBistro in April.
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