Google Play Points will soon work at checkout for in-app purchases

In-app purchases are a fact of life these days, especially in mobile games. Thankfully, Google has a points program that earns you rewards you can trade for cash that apply to in-app purchases from lots of popular games and services.

Unfortunately, to use your Google Play Points, you need to pre-emptively buy what you want from the Play Points page. Soon, however, you’ll be able to use your points just as you would any other payment method right from the checkout page within the app.

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This will eliminate a very cumbersome step from the process of cashing out your points. It will also make the Play Points system more appealing to general users who will now be able to more easily see how their points work.

Using Google Play Points is easy

The GIF above tells you all you need to know about this fundamental change. When you’re at the checkout page within an app or game, you’ll be able to select “Use points” to pay for all or some of the transaction. You won’t need to exit the app, convert your points to a reward, and then restart the app. So much easier!

If you don’t have enough points to cover the whole transaction, you can use all (or some) of your points and then finish off the transaction with a different payment method.

Google doesn’t have a specific timeframe for the rollout of this Google Play Points update. However, whenever it does land, it will only land in the countries that support the Play Points program. That includes Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States.