Google has a new in-app payments product in private beta. Current users of Jambool’s Social Gold found about the product, which will most likely be formally launched at this year’s Google I/O in May. Google acquired Jambool back in August.
TechCrunch has posted an email that Social Gold subscribers received, which says that Social Gold will be will be discontinued in favor of a new Google in-app payment product in May 2011, and that users are invited to a pre-release beta of the Google in-app payment system, which will "enable developers to accept payments within an app, but it will not have the full functionality of Social Gold at launch."
They are then told they can join the beta at this link. On that page, it asks users if they heard about Google in-app payments from Jambool/Social Gold, a Game Developer Conference, the Chrome Web Store, or other.
On Jambool’s blog, the company writes:
We are hard at work developing a web-based, in-app payments solution that combines the simplicity of the Jambool API with the power of the Google Checkout and Google accounts infrastructure. We’re very excited about the ease of use of the new system, with features such as one-click purchasing.
While this work is underway, we made the difficult decision to close new signups to the Social Gold platform today and will discontinue all payment processing on May 31, 2011. Existing developers will be able to continue processing payments through Social Gold until the end of May and log in to the Social Gold merchant console through September.
The Google in-app payments system will enable developers to easily accept payments within an app. This is the first version, and we will focus our investment in this API moving forward. Developers should expect the same innovation, and more, from us on this new platform.
The company says existing merchants can continue to log into the existing social gold platform until September.
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