Looks as though in-app purchases will be coming to Android apps this May. A company called Jambool, that developed an online payments system called ‘Social Gold’, was acquired by Google last August. This morning, Jambool sent an email out to its customers, notifying them of some impending changes.
The email, which was forwarded to TechCrunch, says that “the existing Jambool Social Gold product will be discontinued in favor of a new Google in-app payment product in May 2011,” and that the new system will “enable developers to accept payments within an app.”
The email encourages devs to sign up for the pre-release beta here: http://google.com/checkout/inapp.
In-app payments have been a feature of iPhone and iPad apps since 2009. Perhaps the most popular example of in-app payments working is the Mighty Eagle on Angry Birds, where you pay 59p to finish a level that you can’t beat. That’s not the only use for it though; DC Comics and Playboy allow readers to purchase individual issues through their respective apps.
At its Android 3.0 Honeycomb event last month, Google announced that it would be bringing in-app payments to Android apps and games, with Tap Tap Revenge supporting it from launch.
Rovio has been working on its own pay-by-text system (the ‘Bad Piggy Bank’) in order to bring in-app payments to the Android edition of Angry Birds.
It’s thought that Google will announce in-app payments at its I/O 2011 event on the 10th and 11th of May, along with Android 2.4 and the rumoured Google Music Sync feature.
Source: Fone Home
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