Buying an app on your phone is straightforward: You head to the App Store or the Google Play Store, tap on the buy button, and have your credit card automatically charged when the app downloads.
In emerging markets like India, a country where nearly everyone uses Android phones and nearly no one uses a credit card, that’s a problem. On Wednesday, Google announced that it was making it easier for people in countries like these to buy apps without using credit card with a feature called “pending transactions”.
When a user tries to buy an app from the Google Play Store, they can choose to receive a payment code, which they can take to a participating retail store near them, and pay for their purchase in cold, hard cash — after which their app will automatically download to their device. “This is a new class of delayed form of payment — like cash, bank transfer, and direct debit,” Aurash Mahbod, Google’s director of engineering for the Play Store,Google’s Android operating system powers nearly