How I got screwed up by Google Checkout

First of all - technically, it was my mistake.

I registered an Android Developer account, configured Google Wallet with my VISA, paid the license, and developed an app I hoped to make money from. This took 2 months.

The product is almost ready, when I decide to get a closer look at the "Upload application" section and I realize that Google Checkout is not supported in my country (Bulgaria).

Yes - I did not research that before I started the project. But I wonder - was it stupid to make the assumption that one can sell his/her app in one of the world's leading software markets from an EU country?

Or is there something I'm overlooking?

2 comments

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nextparadigms 14y ago ↗

Ever since they made Google Checkout, Google has been very lazy with it. I understand that maybe they still couldn't have beaten Paypal by now, seeing how they are the market leader and all, but I still find it inexcusable how slow they've been moving with Google Checkout over the years. It's still not working like Paypal in many countries, and perhaps even more importantly not too many people use it right now.

This has come back to haunt them for their mistake, now that they have Android, because they could've really used a larger Checkout userbase with Android, to help both users and developers to buy and sell apps, and also for other of their services.

itsprofitbaron 14y ago ↗

This issue has been consistently reported by developers from unsupported countries to Google regarding this - yet nothing seems to be done about it.

For instance, http://www.zdnet.com/blog/google/how-to-sell-android-apps-fr... covered this issue in 2010 amongst many others.

However, if you are looking to still sell your app then you should look into alternative Android markets such as:

http://slideme.org/ and http://mall.soc.io/ ETC there are loads of them :)