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PayPal launches new iOS SDK to allow in-app payment for third-party apps

PayPal said on Friday that it is rolling out a new mobile software development kit that will let Apple iOS device users make in-app purchases via the company's payment service without having to switch apps.

Announced to through a blog post from the SXSW Festival, PayPal's new SDK also expands customer payment options to include the company's card.io technology, which allows users to take a picture of their credit card instead of manually inputting the information.

As noted by The Next Web, with the new software, developers can create apps that offer an enhanced user experience. Currently, when a purchaser pays through PayPal in a third-party app, they are taken to either Safari or PayPal's own iOS app to complete the transfer.

â€œDevelopers should have the freedom to focus on innovating for their customers, not spending time worrying about handling the complex task of payments,â€ PayPal CTO James Barrese said in the post. â€œBut we listened when our developers said they wanted better capabilities from us, and now weâ€™re doubling down on our developer programs to deliver the best tools in the industry.â€

In addition to the in-app integration, the e-payment giant introduced new JavaScript PayPal buttons that can be implemented with just five lines of code.

Finally, PayPal is beta-launching REST, OAuth and JSON versions of its most popular APIs, payment processing and immediate settlement, to help streamline integration for developers.

In the post, Barrese noted that the SDK will first be rolled out to iOS devs, with support for other platforms coming down the road.

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11 Comments

jragosta

said about 11 years ago

It will be interesting to see how long it takes for them to realize that this violates the App Store TOS.

cynic

said about 11 years ago

Quote:

Originally Posted by jragosta

It will be interesting to see how long it takes for them to realize that this violates the App Store TOS.

This is incorrect.

Apple's In-App Purchasing only applies for virtual goods extending an application, its content, etc. In fact, developers are not allowed to use Apple's In-App Purchasing if sale of any real/physical goods is involved.

Therefore PayPal's move does make perfect sense.

mstone

said about 11 years ago

Quote:

Originally Posted by cynic

Quote:

Originally Posted by jragosta

It will be interesting to see how long it takes for them to realize that this violates the App Store TOS.

This is incorrect.

Therefore PayPal's move does make perfect sense.

So how does PayPal implement this SDK? I am not aware of any app to app behind the scenes communication except through Apple kits such as MapKit. Do you think the PayPal check out service will be offered as third party compiled code that uses a remote service like SOAP or AJAX type interface so as to be transparent to the user? It is a little confusing because there appears to be a typo in the first paragraph.

"...via the company's payment service having to switch apps." ???

And what happens to developers who do try to sell virtual goods through the service?

Here is a document about in app purchases:

https://developer.apple.com/in-app-purchase/In-App-Purchase-Guidelines.pdf

cynic

said about 11 years ago

Quote:

Originally Posted by mstone

"...via the company's payment service having to switch apps." ???

And what happens to developers who do try to sell virtual goods through the service?

Here is a document about in app purchases:

https://developer.apple.com/in-app-purchase/In-App-Purchase-Guidelines.pdf

You're right, there seems to have been a typo. Naturally this should have read "... without having to switch apps".

What does this mean? It means that people don't have to switch to Safari anymore to process a payment through a website.

Essentially this is a combination of multiple technologies. You got new REST APIs on one side and you got a mobile SDK in form of a static library on the other, which you can include into your app project.

Regarding selling virtual goods through the PayPal service it will simply lead to a rejection of the app on submission. We've seen this before, even companies such as Amazon had to remove links for signing up, because it essentially leads to people bypassing Apple's IAP for virtual items such as music tracks or books.

Edit: As for why they need this SDK in addition to REST APIs has multiple reasons. For one it naturally makes a developers life easier, because depending on the implementation it might save a lot of work, will probably handle the transaction UI for you and spares you handling accessing the REST service directly, encryption, etc.

More importantly however, the control of a user's account and associated details remains hidden from the developer. This is handled by the SDK. Were you to access the REST service directly, you would need to have at least basic information about the user account, such as gathering username and password for transmission to PayPal. However, in such a scenario, no one knows what else you might do with that data you just gathered, whereas it remains in PayPals control what happens with such data through their SDK.

jragosta

said about 11 years ago

[quote name="cynic" url="/t/156378/paypal-launches-new-mobile-sdk-to-allow-third-party-ios-apps#post_2290576"] This is incorrect. Apple's In-App Purchasing only applies for virtual goods extending an application, its content, etc. In fact, developers are not allowed to use Apple's In-App Purchasing if sale of any real/physical goods is involved. Therefore PayPal's move does make perfect sense. [/quote] Where did the article say anything about physical goods? It simply said that you could use this software for in app purchases: "PayPal said on Friday that it is rolling out a new mobile software development kit that will let Apple iOS device users make in-app purchases via the company's payment service without having to switch apps." In the past, ALL in-app purchases had to go through Apple. There's nothing in this article that explains why this is any different. http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/2011/2/3/apple_changes_app_store_purchase_rules.htm