If you’ve tried to make a purchase on Cydia lately, you may have noticed one big difference with the available payment options. Amazon is no longer available as a means to make payment, leaving only PayPal as an option.
For me, this is really unfortunate, because Amazon allowed you to authorize a set number of dollars in advance, making it easy to make multiple Cydia purchases over a period of months without necessitating a reauth. I’ve never been a fan of PayPal and its business practices, but I also hate how cumbersome it can be to simply log in to PayPal.
As of today, we’re down to a single option for Cydia purchases, but that could be changing soon.
Before and after
Before you jump to blame saurik for this issue, this is no fault of his own, as he explained on reddit. Amazon actually ceased its Flexible Payments option earlier today, while at the same time dwindling down Cydia’s payment choices to a single option—PayPal.
Thankfully, saurik is planning on another solution for those of you who cannot have a PayPal account. Hopefully this option will extend to those of us who simply loathe PayPal as well.
I think it’s very important to have at least two payment options available, and to make such a payment option as frictionless as possible. Not only will this ease headaches for those of us looking to purchase our favorite Cydia tweaks, but it will help reduce the urge to take the pirate route in the process.
Note: you may still see amazon as a payment option if you previously established a set dollar amount for authorization, but as soon as you reach the threshold or clear payment information, the amazon option will disappear completely.
What do you think about Amazon’s sunsetting of Flexible Payments? I’m sad to see it go. What about you?