Merging PayPal’s familiar digital payment system with Google’s Android Marketplace may be imminent, reported Bloomberg, which broke the news that Google and PayPal are in discussions about just that. Android phones including Motorola’s Droid X and Samsung’s Galaxy S could benefit from the move before the end of 2010. Currently, users pay for Android Market apps via credit card or Google’s Checkout service.
A PayPal spokesperson declined to comment on the rumor but noted that the platform-agnostic payment service is seeing “three times as many app submissions for Android versus iPhone.”
Google’s strategy is intended to spur more developers into creating apps for the Android Market, a mere 70,000 apps versus Apple’s 225,000 for iPhone/iPod touch. In addition to making transactions easier for customers, the move could also prove more lucrative for current and would-be developers because PayPal has 87 million active accounts. PayPal is already an app for accepting and making mobile payments on both the iPhone and Android platforms; the PayPal Mobile app for iPhone has been downloaded more than 2.5 million times.
