Purchases in Android

How are purchases of physical products handled in android? Are there any limitants and/or considerations? As I read in this article: http://developer.android.com/guide/market/billing/index.html Android developers are only considering digital products not physical. Nevertheless,I just found an office depot app which let us choose physical products from their store, add them to a shopping car and check them out. Furthermore, when cheking out we also have the chance to add a payment account i.e. credit card, meaning we must use security either for storing credit card data or to send it. When working with In-App, they say that the end-user makes his purchases by using its linked android market account (as well as the developer ..and a merchandise account also) but in开发者_高级运维 the other case with office depot, I guess the developer must build the entire billing platform, doesn't he?

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You can use in-app billing to sell only digital content. You cannot use in-app billing to sell physical goods, personal services, or anything that requires physical delivery.

Source

Thats for googles in app-billing. You may use other payment methods (self-built or external such as paypal). But these are not allowed in the android market afaik. So you have to distribute your app yourself too, or use alternative markets.

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Edit:

Oh found something:

Developers charging for applications and downloads from Android Market must do so by using an authorized Payment Processor. Developers offering additional content, goods, or services for an application downloaded from Android Market must offer an authorized Payment Processor as the payment option.

The following are exceptions for the two requirements above:

• Where payment is primarily for a physical good or service (e.g. buying movie tickets; e.g. buying a newspaper app where the price also includes a hard copy subscription)

• Where payment is for digital content or goods that may be consumed outside of the application itself (e.g. buying songs that can be played on other music players)

Source

So i was wrong. It seems to be allowed to use other payment providers if you are distributing physical goods.