Buying eBooks on Android just became a lot harder as Barnes & Noble stops selling eBooks in its Android app

Users of Barnes & Noble’s Android app and Audible will find it much harder to buy digital books from inside the respective apps starting next week. In the case of Barnes & Noble, the company is removing the ability of users to purchase eBooks from inside the NOOK app because of the enforcement of an in-app billing policy by Google. According to The Verge, Google’s updated in-app billing policy requires developers to update their apps to support the Google Play billing system by 31^st March 2022.

Audible’s case is slightly different than Barnes & Noble. Instead of restricting the purchase of books from inside the app, Audible will be removing the ability to use your debit or credit cards to purchase books from the Audible app. You can only use Audible credits to buy digital books. That said, you can buy Audible credits from the app using your credit/debit card.

If you want to buy books or pay for any membership plans that you have subscribed to or plan to subscribe to, you’ll need to use Google Play’s billing system instead of Audible’s own.

The development comes right on the heels of the announcement of a program from Google that allows developers to offer their payment methods instead of the Google Play billing system. But, as it turns out, developers can only offer their payment method after first committing to billing through the Google Play.

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