There are a lot of supporters, and to be fair, detractors, for PayPal. But since Android is all about choice, the lack thereof has irked the debit-card-toting masses behind the eBayer’s payment of choice for some time. But according to some of the folks at AndroidGuys, some code found in the latest Android Market indicates that the payment service will be added soon.
Rumblings of PayPal support have been running around the Android rumor mill for years, but so far, it’s been just that: rumor. Of course there’s the official PayPal app, and you can use PayPal for many in-app purchases, like ComiXology, but the addition to the Market could make paid apps a lot more accessible to international Android users, or those who just don’t want to sign up for yet another online payment system.
The code found in the Market app is certainly promising. It’s hard to imagine why Google would put it in there if they didn’t intend to use it, and soon. And it’s a bigger deal than you might realize – lots of contractors and online workers get most or all of their salary via PayPal, and official support would mean one less hoop for them to go through to get some app action. With Google expanding into book, movies and soon music, they might be eager to make paying as easy as possible.
[via Phandroid]
I am skeptical because of the ongoing lawsuit with Paypal Vs Google over Google Wallet.
That sounds fabulous. Checkout doesn’t seem to work for me at all. Tried everything. Paypal…So excited..hope its not another rumor.
PayPal integration will surely give users another great option to pay for apps without creating too many payment accounts. Many of users already have PayPal accounts from years and to make app purchases they had to create Google Checkout accounts, but that won’t be needed anymore.
I’ve never really understood this need for app for websites? I just use the website, if browsing the web anyway and want to use paypal, just click a new tab and click paypal, much faster than loadinganother app just for said website.
“Most folks on Wall St. view eBay really as PayPal plus a marketplace …”
http://ebaystrategies.blogs.com/ebay_strategies/2011/10/could-ebays-worst-nightmare-be-happening-soon-.html#disqus_thread
That’s an astute observation, but John Donahoe and Scott Thompson are simply delusional if they think that PreyPal can continue to underpin the faltering eBay Marketplace “house of cards” by becoming even a minor threat to the existing payments systems of the banks/Visa/MasterCard at traditional Point-of-Sale—the idea is pure science fiction. (“Beam me up Scotty!”)
The real question is, when are the world’s various banking regulators going to finally do something about over-sighting PreyPal, an unethical, unprofessional, effectively unregulated and clunky financial operator that offers unlicensed banking-type services and is, in effect, simply a money gouging arm of the Ho’s “eBafia”?
Even though PreyPal clearly offers banking-type services (ie, holding users’ funds in non-prudentially regulated and non-FDIC insured banking-type accounts, etc), PreyPal is mostly registered in some places not as a bank nor as a provider of credit but only as a “money transmitter” (like Western Union), and PreyPal has even claimed that they “are not a payment network”, and there is a grain of truth in that claim because most (but not all) of their activities facilitate the transmission of funds simply by riding on the back of the banks’ existing payments processing systems.
In fact, the only thing creative about PreyPal has been their founding use of users’ unique email addresses as identifiers for online payment transactions. PreyPal is otherwise no more than a blood-sucking parasite riding on the back of, and in the main cannot function except via, Visa/MasterCard and the banks’ existing payments processing systems.
Regardless, outside of PreyPal’s mandated use on whatever will ultimately be left of the Donahoe-stagnated* eBay Marketplace, PreyPal (and most other third-party payments processors) will eventually be consigned to the history books by the retail banks/Visa/MasterCard once those “professional” players get their “online” act together. There is nothing surer than the sun will rise in the morning.
Both eBay and its ugly daughter PreyPal are most devious, unethical, unprofessional organisations: both have become the most despised commercial entities on the planet—apparently, even more hated than “the banks” by many. eBay, amongst many other things, has forever knowingly and criminally, facilitated shill bidding fraud on their trusting auction buyers. And what else can be said about PreyPal that a great many PreyPal merchants don’t already know, to their cost: the probability is that if, as a merchant, you have chosen, or are forced, to use PreyPal you are eventually going to get burned; it’s really only a matter of the degree of the burn.
Having said that, it’s possible that PreyPal can survive by becoming the merchant account provider “of last resort” for those very small or unscrupulous merchants unable to get a real merchant account from their own bank—Oh, hang on, hasn’t PreyPal always been just that, and charged all their users accordingly?
* See http://eventhorizon1984.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/ebay-inc-2011-third-quarter-earnings-call-numbers-of-interest-to-small-business-sellers/
PreyPal Claims that PreyPal Is Not a Payments Processor!
http://forums.auctionbytes.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=24148
eBay, a Knowing Criminal Facilitator of Auction Shill Bidding Fraud: Case Study #4:
http://forums.auctionbytes.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=23540
And, from along the way, a compilation of (mostly inane) quotes from eBay executives:
http://forums.auctionbytes.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=24159
Enron / eBay / PayPal / Donahoe: Dead Men Walking.