Google In-App Payments for (some) developers

When last I wrote about Google payment options, Google had teased developers about their upcoming in-app payment technology with trailer-style videos like this:

Google promised that the Google In-App Payments API would offer:

An easy, effective way to make money while keeping your customers engaged in your web app, and it’s priced at just 5-percent.

Problem was, it wasn’t available yet.

Last month, Google made one small step to address that shortcoming by releasing in-app payments to developers with US bank accounts.  As they noted in the blog post announcement:

Today, we’re making Google In-App Payments available for all web application developers to integrate with their web apps wherever they’re hosted, including the Chrome Web Store. Integration is simple with just a few lines of code. And pricing is set at just 5-percent.

Amit Fulay, Google Product Manager, went on to say:

In-App Payments is initially available for developers with a United States bank account and for buyers in more than 140 countries. We look forward to expanding to additional developer locations as quickly as possible.

So if you have a US based bank account, you can sign up to give Google In-App Payments a try.  They require quite a bit of private and public business information as you can see below.

It’s no secret that I believe PayPal’s payment solutions to be superior to Google’s for most developers.  As I wrote in my recent Alternative Payment Systems series concluding article:

Google Checkout does not provide anywhere near the full capabilities of the complete PayPal X Platform.  It compares most directly to PayPal’s Website Payments, Fraud Management Filters, and Embedded Payments technologies.  Even if you include Google In-App Payments and Google Wallet…Google solutions still fail to provide the full functionality available commercially today in the PayPal X Platform.  Given the choice between the two, I would recommend the PayPal X Platform in most cases unless a merchant was already locked in a fairly tight business relationship with Google.

Click here to read the complete post on the PayPal X Developer Network including some resources to consider if you do fall into the “tight relationship” camp.