In-app purchases return to Amazon’s Prime Video app

Some news from the someone-must-have-struck-a-deal department: Amazon is once again allowing users of its Prime Video app to directly purchase VOD rentals and other items on Android devices. The company notified Prime Video subscribers of the change via email in recent days, writing:

“In-app purchasing is now available on all Android mobile and Android-powered video streaming devices. Simply go to the Prime Video app on your mobile device and find the movie, TV show, or channel subscription you want to purchase. Rent, buy, or subscribe directly from your device, and you're ready to start streaming instantly.”

Amazon removed in-app purchases for digital goods and services from its Android apps last year to avoid having to fork over 30% of those fees to Google. The fact that those purchases are back suggests that the two companies may have come to some kind of commercial agreement that makes in-app-purchases once again viable for Amazon.

There’s no word on if and when in-app purchases may return to the Kindle app for Android, which also disabled them last year. (Amazon’s PR department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.)

The decision to bring in-app purchases back to the Prime Video app for Android is just the latest example for a recent thawing of relations between Amazon and Google. The two companies resolved their differences over Amazon’s use of a forked version of Android for its Fire TV devices last year, and Google recently abandoned a long-standing policy of not allowing its Google Assistant and Alexa to run on smart speakers simultaneously.

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Photo by Fernando Santander on Unsplash