If you purchased one of the original Nexus 7 devices from Google direct on launch you were given some free credit to use for any items from the Google Play store. Apart from this free gift all other purchases have been made on a PAYG basis with your credit or debit card being charged small amounts every time you buy an app which for some people can cause two problems.
First of all these small payments take up a lot of space on statements and even worse what if you wanted a mini statement from the back of your last 10 transactions and 9 of them are for 99p to Google, it does not help you manage your finances. The other problem which I have experienced myself was after a few small purchases some banks put a security fraud block on your card meaning until you call them to confirm these are real payments you cannot use your card online.
Thankfully this could all be coming to an end with the introduction of ‘Gift Cards’ which have been made available in the States for a while now but have still not made their way overseas for everyone else.
This is something Apple offer for their iTunes service and is really handy at times like this when you could purchase a gift card for someone as a Christmas present and let them download what they want from the store, especially handy now music downloads are available.
AndroidCentral have come across a page on the UK store where you get the option to redeem a voucher code but considering these are not available yet hopefully they will be shortly.
Link: AndroidCentral
This is what I have been waiting for so that my kids can get paid for content. As soon as magazines arrived, making the full product range available in the uk, I figured that gift cards can’t be far away. I reckon they will launch just before or just after Xmas, as I bet a lot of people will be gifted Nexus 7s.
Press menu in the market…. redeem is there now and works in pounds…