More Payment Options in Android Market
A key to a great purchasing experience is providing users with simple and fast payment methods. The Android Market team has been working hard to deliver more forms of payment to further reduce purchase friction. Today, I am pleased to announce …
Context & Ripple Effects
Android Market has been building out its commerce layer in stages: paid applications arrived in early 2009, and earlier this month the client itself got an overhaul aimed at discovery and merchandising. Today's announcement extends that arc from storefront to checkout — the team's stated goal is reducing purchase friction by adding more forms of payment.
That matters because a store's conversion rate is only as good as its payment coverage: every buyer who lacks a supported payment method is a sale the developer never sees. Broadening accepted methods widens the addressable buyer base without developers changing their apps.
First-order effects
- Developers selling on Android Market get access to buyers who previously abandoned at checkout because no supported payment method fit them — direct lift to paid-app conversion with no code changes on their side.
- Google takes on more payment-processor relationships and associated fraud/chargeback handling, deepening its role as merchant-of-record for the entire catalog.
Second-order effects
- Carriers and alternative-payment providers gain (or compete for) billing integration with Android Market, making handset-billing deals a lever in carrier negotiations over Android devices.
- Apple's App Store, which at this point leans primarily on card-and-carrier billing through iTunes accounts, faces pressure to match checkout flexibility in markets where card penetration limits paid-app spending.
Third-order effects
- If friction reduction keeps compounding conversion, app-store economics shift further toward volume: lower per-purchase friction favors low-price, high-volume catalogs and strengthens the platform cut model Google established when it first allowed priced apps in 2009.
- Checkout breadth becomes table stakes in platform competition — whichever store localizes payment to each market converts better there, pushing both major stores toward region-by-region payment partnerships as a standing capability rather than a one-off project.
The trend: Mobile app stores are evolving from simple card-checkout catalogs into payments platforms, where each added payment method expands the monetizable user base in regions cards don't reach.