Gift cards likely headed to Google Play, APK teardown reveals

Gift cards for the Google Play Store have been a much-requested feature for the service, and now it seems Google may be preparing to launch them. The Play Store APK (application file) was recently updated to version 3.8.15.

After finding that the new version was a few kilobytes heavier, the guys at Android Police decided to decode the APK and start digging around, and they uncovered a wealth of evidence in support of the existence of Play gift cards.

The new APK apparently intercepts links to the URL play.google.com/redeem (currently inactive). There are also code references to activities in the app associated with redeeming gift codes, as well as new art assets for the pages where they’re to be used. And a couple of enterprising hackers even managed to tinker around and open up the hidden gift code redemption pages, as evidenced by the shots above.

So we think it’s pretty much guaranteed that Google will be introducing this feature at some point in the future, and given that most of the code to enable this is now on consumers’ devices, we hope it’ll be rolled out sooner rather than later.

Source: Android Police