Well, yes, I know about that option, but as I understand it, that still means I'll have to connect my Google account to his phone, which is exactly what I don't want to do. There's a lot of other things besides credit card information involved in that. Also, I don't want to make him a Google account and have my credit card permanently connected to it. After all, the Android market is hardly the only place you can use Google checkout.

I still don't see any way to avoid having to add and remove my credit card from his account every time I need to buy something for his phone.

A lot of games use Google Checkout to let you purchase stuff inside the game - Puzzle Quest 2 for example - so yeah, if it only works for the Marketplace and not for every single time the payment info is accessed, then it's still dangerous.

In that case yeah, unfortunately there's no way to do what you want, nor is it on an Apple device.

Yeah, plus all the stuff you can buy using Google Checkout on the web. I mean, if he browses a website on his computer, that payment option won't be restricted by the setting in the Android Market app on his phone.

That applies to in-app purchases as well, as long as they respect the best design guidelines published by Google which state that in-app purchases should still use the API for regular purchases.

Outside of that, there's nothing you can really do unfortunately.

I'll just leave this here... Apologies if someone else has already mentioned these guys. I only skimmed the thread.

http://www.mobiroo.com/?site=true

I've used these guys before. They're a new company and their app selection isn't the best right now, but as gift cards for Android go they're the most viable right now.