Thursday, May 26, 2016

PayPal discontinues Amazon Fire, BlackBerry and Windows Phone apps

As if by coincidence, PayPal has just announced that it will sunset the Windows Phone version of its app starting June 30.

It's not uncommon news for BlackBerry, Windows Phone or Amazon users to hear that a company is discontinuing app support for their platforms, but this time, the player is 170-million user strong PayPal.

Although sad for anyone left holding a Windows Phone or Windows 10 Mobile handset, the death of the PayPal app for Windows should come as no surprise.

PayPal is thinning the number of mobile operating systems supported by the company's flagship app down to just two: Android and iOS.

The firm didn't give much of an explanation, but Joanna Lambert, PayPal's VP of consumer product, said in a blog post that it's the right thing to do to enable the firm to "invest resources in creating the very best experiences for customers".

That said, those mobile platforms still have some special features available to them. Outlook.com users can also use the PayPal add-in to send money directly from their inbox. BBM users can still send money to each other in-chat.

The small install base for Window Phone, Fire OS and Blackberry makes PayPal's decision entirely understandable, but the announcement is still sure to rile users who find they now have to make use of the mobile website rather than a dedicated app.

"It was a hard decision to no longer support the PayPal app on these mobile platforms", Lambert continues, "but we believe it's the right thing to ensure we are investing our resources in creating the very best experiences for our customers". That version, however, is only supported on Android 4.0.3 or later and iOS 8.1 or later.


Source: PayPal discontinues Amazon Fire, BlackBerry and Windows Phone apps

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