How To Take Payments Online

Ecommerce News

• Google launches in-app subscriptions on Google Play

  Yesterday, in-app subscriptions became a possibility for Android developers as Google announced that Android apps distributed via Google Play can now access subscription functionality. Developers can set their own prices for subscriptions, as well as the duration (monthly or annual subscriptions seem to be the two options offered). Google is also rolling out a new HTTP-based API that will allow developers to validate and cancel subscriptions that are tied to any backend service an app relies on. As one might expect, Google controls the entire billing process, including renewal payments. While all subscriptions are set to auto-renew, to reduce the likelihood of unwanted charges, Google will send updates to users if subscription terms change and provide email notifications with renewal payments. Google says that 23 of the top 24 grossing apps on Google Play utilize in-app billing, so there's good reason to believe that many developers will be eager to implement subscriptions. This said, it will be interesting to see if content owners and publishers specifically embrace the ability to build apps that incorporate subscriptions. On one hand, Google's update will certainly create new revenue opportunities. But on the other hand, the fact that the subscription is really owned by Google may give some publishers pause. As we've seen with organizations like the Financial Times, capitalizing on mobile opportunities doesn't just depend on having the right monetization tools; it often depends on choosing where, how and by whom they're implemented.

• PayPal partners with 15 retailers in big offline push

  The merchants teaming up with PayPal are some of the biggest retail brands in the United States and include Toys R Us, Barnes & Noble and J.C. Penney. They join other early partners like Home Depot, which offers PayPal as a payment option in some 2,000 of its stores. PayPal's Don Kingsborough calls this latest group of retail partners "our first installment" and promised that others would be coming on board in the near future. To that end, PayPal also announced yesterday a pact with point-of-sale (POS) vendor VeriFone, which will put a variety of PayPal checkout options on VeriFone POS systems. VeriFone, of course, has been moving aggressively to protect its position in the payments market as established financial institutions and upstarts alike try to tap into all of the new opportunities mobile technologies are creating to give consumers new payment options. To start, PayPal solutions will be rolled out on the POS solutions that are used by VeriFone's largest retailers, but there's room to grow; as the companies' press release notes, VeriFone's customer base consists of 80% of the top 200 retailers in the United States. The multi-billion dollar question, of course, is whether PayPal's ubiquity online will help it expand successfully offline. While PayPal's sizable user base and recognizable brand make offering PayPal payment options a decent bet for retailers, it's not yet clear whether consumers are going to embrace these payment options. The good news for PayPal is that in its effort to become a big player offline, it can more easily open doors its upstart competitors can't. While companies like Square, which in many cases lack defensible technologies, have to work hard to sign up individual small business customers and to break into lucrative but relatively small verticals, the deals PayPal announced yesterday suggest that it's going to be able to scale its offline initiatives quite quickly and efficiently. In the battle for the future of the payments space, that could prove to be a crucial advantage.

• This week's top six infographics

  The EU cookie law conundrum in numbers  LinkedIn Vs Facebook: Who’s The Best At B2B (SimplyZesty)   Social sharing buttons (TheSearchAgent)   TRUSTe Privacy Index (TRUSTe) Making Sense of the SoLoMo Landscape (Rocket Fuel) Three ways businesses struggle with mobile (via zdnet)