Android in-app purchase or Third party payment gateway

Question

We are going to build a mobile app for iOS and Android (might build a web app later) where users can upload videos and their friends and followers can watch them. The videos can be either free or also be tagged with a price. If I tag a video with $1 when uploading it, my friends and followers will have to first pay $1 to watch and after paying that $1 they can watch it any time after that.

My client wants to use Authorize.net to do the payments. In iOS there are restrictions like we must use IAP for such feature. Similarly is there any restrictions on Android as well, that we must use Google In-app Billing or is it OK to use Authorize.net to do the payments?

Answer 1

Taken from this page:

Payments

Apps that employ in-store or in-app purchases must comply with the following guidelines:

In-store purchases: Developers charging for apps and downloads from Google Play must use Google Play’s payment system. In-app purchases:

• Developers offering products within a game downloaded on Google Play or providing access to game content must use Google Play In-app Billing as the method of payment.
  
• Developers offering products within another category of app downloaded on Google Play must use Google Play In-app Billing as the method of payment, except for the following cases:
  • Payment is solely for physical products
  • Payment is for digital content that may be consumed outside of the app itself (e.g. songs that can be played on other music players).
• In-app virtual currencies must only be used within the app where they were first purchased.
• Developers must not mislead users about the apps they are selling nor about any in-app services, goods, content, or functionality offered for purchase. If your product description on Google Play refers to in-app features that may require a specific or additional charge, your description must clearly notify users that payment is required to access those features.

So I guess the answer is no, you have to use Google Play in-app billing if you want to publish the app in the play store. But the policy states that digital content under some circumstances is excluded, I guess this applies to videos as well, although I'm not to sure about it. Depends on whether the videos can be played outside of the app (at least so it seems).