In-Application Payment from Mobile Apps: A study of In-App Payment

Abstract

The main purpose of this thesis is to evaluate and compare existing serviceproviders of in-app payment solutions and their APIs, and then concludewhat would be the best choice for hobby developers when deciding on whatservice provider to use for their application.We gained hands-on experience by developing a simple Quiz game appthat featured the implementation of in-app purchase. We took a look atthe major service providers; Apple, Google, PayPal and Windows to getrelevant information and evaluate them based on a comparison model that wecreated. The comparison model consists of a business and a technical aspect,and within of those aspects we chose the most relevant properties that arenecessary to give a fair comparison. We conducted a survey among hobbydevelopers - both students and IT-employees - in order to get insight on whichproperties within in-app payment they considered as the most importantones. With these results we were able to find some indications on which ofthe service providers are best suited for the hobby developer.The survey indicated that easy distribution, good documentation andguides along with an easy development process was the most important aspectsamong our participants. Surprisingly, the importance of potential profitwas rather lower than we expected. Based on what we learned from the surveyand the differences we observed during the evaluation of the differentservice providers we concluded that the best suited in-app payment providerfor the hobby developer is Google?s solution.