Android App Buying books from the Kobo Store through Android App

[bluepeter]

If I buy a book from the Kobo Store through my web browser, the cost is deducted from my store credit balance. But would the same thing happen if I buy through the Android app?

Yesterday evening, I received a notification from the Android app, telling me that a book on my wishlist was on special offer. I decided to buy it. I started the process through the Adroid app. There was a substantial credit on my account, so I was expecting to use some of that. I was therefore rather surprised to get a prompt demanding that I choose a payment method. At this point, I gave up, booted my laptop, and bought the book through my web browser.

But what would have happened if I'd continued the process in the Android app? Would I have used up a bit of my store credit, or would I have had an extra charge on my credit card? It's not a big deal, but I'd like to know: after all, the fact that I make a lot of small purchases is the reason why I maintain a store credit balance.

[JSWolf]

You could have gone the next step to see if the store credit was one of the payment options.

[Cactus Chef]

I've been doing the bulk of my purchases on Kobo through the Android app for the past year or two. What I can tell you is that they seem to flip their billing system on a whim every few months. Right now, it's going through the Google Play billing system (meaning it would charge a credit card you have stored in your Google wallet). But that seems to have flipped back in the past couple weeks--prior to that, it was using Kobo's native billing system. During that time you could have used your balance to pay for the book.

I don't particularly mind using the Google Play billing system, because it means that Kobo doesn't store any of my credit info. If I have a balance that I need to apply, I simply open Kobo in the browser on my phone or laptop instead.

[bluepeter]

Thanks very much, @Cactus Chef. That's useful information.

[Quoth]

Kobo are more trustworthy than Google (and unlike Amazon do take Paypal). Ever tried removing paypal or a payment card from Google?
Google takes a cut if Android /playstore payment is used and they lost court case where Google insisted apps from Playstore could only use Google.

[Cactus Chef]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Kobo are more trustworthy than Google (and unlike Amazon do take Paypal). Ever tried removing paypal or a payment card from Google?
Google takes a cut if Android /playstore payment is used and they lost court case where Google insisted apps from Playstore could only use Google.

I briefly had Kobo pointing to Paypal during a time when the app was using its own billing system and I didn't feel like buying a $15 gift card from Amazon to cover a $1.99 book purchase I wanted. However, I had a frustrating incident with PayPal where it tried to charge my default credit card and failed, and rather than alerting me or halting the transaction, PayPal instead automatically retried the payment using another payment method I had stored on my PayPal account (in this case, it was a bank account I had temporarily linked there for a gift payout). That was absolutely unacceptable and should have never been allowed to happen, so I subsequently severed the connection between Kobo and PayPal.

[gabriele_rose]

I've always had the same thought but never actually tested it — the Android app's insistence on picking a payment method every time is pretty annoying. My guess is it would've charged your card rather than touching the credit balance, but honestly I'm not certain enough to have risked it either. Might be worth dropping Kobo support a line if you're curious, they'd probably give you a straight answer about how the app handles store credit vs the browser version.