Get ready, all you Android phone owners, for money to fly out of your pockets even easier. If you’ve always looked to your iPhone brethren with envy, secretly coveting the ease with which they can buy and pay for iPhone apps, then covet no more – a change to the Android Market terms for developers likely means that purchases will soon be billable to your monthly phone bill rather than on a per transaction basis.
If you’ve ever owned an iPhone, then you know how easy it is to spend money on apps and make in-app purchases. You simply click on the install button and enter your App Store password and – voila! – you’re done. The charge shows up on your carrier phone bill at the end of the month. It can make going through a standard credit card transaction seem a long and arduous process in comparison.
So far, though, Google Checkout has been the only option for Android users (outside of T-Mobile, that is). And instead of just paying once, at the end of the month, Android users have had to make a payment for each transaction, at the time of the purchase. As Android-centric blog Droid Life points out, the development means that “when you are browsing through the paid app section and realize that you don’t have $14.99 for MLB at Bat 2010 in your Google Checkout account, you can choose the option to ‘bill later’ which lands that charge straight onto your monthly carrier bill.”
The Android developers blog noted a change to the Android Market Developer Distribution Agreement that is “in preparation for some work we’re doing on introducing new payment options”. In the new terms, “‘authorized carriers’ have been added as an indemnified party”, according to the blog post.
The post does not give any specific timeline on when carrier billing will be available, but it does offer developers a 30-day window to sign the new terms.
