We are trying to publish an app on android play store with in-app purchases, but we have been blocked for days by a currency problem.
The Google account is based in Ukraine and we entered a payment method in the form of an Ukrainian currency (Hryvnia) account. As a result, the prices of IAP items had to be entered in Hryvnia.
When the player wants to make an in-app purchase, Google does send us a price in the player's local currency (e.g. Euro in France) which we display in the game. But then, when the Google payment window is displayed, the price is in Hryvnia and not in the local currency, which is not convenient for us.
What should we do to make sure that Google displays the price in the local currency?
PS: We asked the question a week ago at the play store support, but we didn't get an answer. Is it always like that?
For information, if others have the same problem: we didn't understand why it didn't work (we strongly think it's a bug in the play console because the "update taxes" button is not working) but we found a workaround: by using template prices instead of direct prices for the IAP items, it works almost correctly.
I also had this problem with a new app. Clicking Update exchange rates didn't help either.
The solution seems to be to upload a preview of the app already and add it to the "Closed testing" track:
Choose Testing -> Closed Testing in the navigation bar:
Click on Manage track right next to the Alpha track, then create a new release and upload your App Bundle / APK or choose an existing one.
Review the release and fix potential upcoming errors*. You can ignore the warnings for now.
You can now go back and the price calculation should work immediately. You don't need to wait for the release to being reviewed.
I don't know why an existing Alpha track is required, but I don't think that this is intended. I sent a small feedback form to the Google Play Developer Console support team.
*: If there is an error about no regions being selected, go back to the "Alpha" track page and choose at least one region in the Countries/regions tab.
Related
I have gone through some links for help, where I found that this is possible in the google play console.
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/7550024?hl=en https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/6346149#zippy=%2Crelease-a-staged-rollout-to-specific-countries
We have one app in the play store since last 5 years and uploaded more than 200 updates. Know we need to set up a country-wise rollout. like if I upload app in the beta(open testing) and after testing, i want to roll out for 2 countries like UAE and Saudi Arabia. and after that, I want to roll out for other regions.
If yes, Is there need to create a separate app for all the regions? or we can just roll out the same app to the other regions from the beta?
Thanks in advance.
Sorry for the delayed response. I got the solution and found it worth sharing, so answering my own question.
For stagged rollout [Percentage wise or country wise], We need to enable "Managed Publishing" you can get more details from this link Control app publishing
Once you enable, You can handle when app should be send to review, when you need to publish app in the play store etc. also you can handle publishing of other content changes. like app content, screen shots, desc etc
You will get all update in publish overview.
After this setup, When you release app to production, open testing, close testing, you will have option after reviewing you app, you can choose which country you want to release and also percentage of the rolling out. you can select any number of percentage from 0 to 100 for rollout.
Cheers.
I am trying to use the getSkuDetails() method to get the currency code: https://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/billing_reference. However the privacy_currency_code is always USD. I tried to things:
(1) VPN to another country from my PC and create a google account, then add that account to test device
(2) VPN the test phone to another country
But in both cases the privacy_currency_code in getSkuDetails is still USD, so why that happens? In the play store console the in-app product is marked with USD. Not sure if that's the cause. If that's the cause why it doesn't automatically convert?
In Play Console have you mark the SKU available for non-US countries? If not, then it defaults to US price.
Also, Google Play allows you to change the country but be aware there is a long cool down of 1 year
https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/7431675?hl=en
Download a vpn, select another country in your phone and create a google account. (important to create a new account, otherwise google "knows" where you are from)
Go to settings, apps, google play, clear cache.
Open your app.
After changing your vpn to another country, clear play store cache. dont need to create one account per country.
Basically, we have two versions of the same app. One is available in my country and the other in another (there is a huge difference between the two, so we had to do them separately).
After updating the app, I usually go sit on the Play store and ensure that it has updated (new version number and release notes), how would I know if the one in the other country has updated? (I only released it today for the first time, so don't even know if it launched successfully)
Sorry, feels like a silly question - but, I could not find a simple solution yet.
Whenever you update your app over Google play store and it is successfully up and running you will get a Notification on your Google play console with saying that your app is live.
if you dint get the notification then you need to check whats wrong with the release management.
There are a few solutions:
Google Play lets you know both in the Play Console and in the Play Copnsole App that your publication has gone live
In the Play console app and the Play console you can see install statistics, so you can see if anyone is installing
You could always use a VPN to check to appear if you are coming from another country
If you have access to a credit card from the other country you could create a second Google Account and use that credit card as a payment method to buy an in-app product. Google Play usually bases the user's country on where the payment method is if they can
You can use Firebase analytics to measure things like installs of the other version
I published my app last night. It took several hours for it to show up, but eventually it did. It's called "Interesting Wikipedia," but when you search those exact words, it doesn't show up. The direct url works: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tierramaxis.interestingwikipedia
Any ideas? The strange thing is, earlier this morning I searched and it was about the 5th entry in the results. When I searched later though, it's not showing any more. I scrolled through about 250 results and it never showed.
Duplicate Questions(Please Read):
Google Play - Android app not showing up after 24 hours
My app is not showing in google play
Why is my app not showing on Google Play? Just now published
App not showing up in android market place/google play
Google Support:
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/#topic=15868
Initial Publish:
I am guessing this is your first app. New apps aren't usually going to be returned at the top of the app search.
When you first publish your application, you need to be patient and wait for Google Play to update and process your application.
For instance, your app is not found under your own developer name:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Kevin+Bright,+Inc.
I did not see it in your search your provided either:
https://play.google.com/store/search?q=interesting%20wikipedia&c=apps
The direct link should always work:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tierramaxis.interestingwikipedia
Here are a few things to improve your visibility:
Ratings(I see you already rated your own app)
Sharing your app(Social sites)
Updating "Full Description"(To be easier to read)
Creating a "Short Description"(Try to fill out all the fields provided by Google Play)
Always remember that this is a game of marketing. The more you invest the more will you rise on all social & commercial sites? Let me explain what happened when you upload an application to the
play store...
You will not able to find the app when searching by its name in Google Play Store because your application is not ranked against google distribution servers.
The Play Store is not as easy as we think it is. So these are some
things to implement if you want success...
First of all, Remember that Google won't push your app to the top until you've had more reviews and downloads than your competitors. There are a few things you can do to try and improve your position.
Try to get a more unique name for your App (But must contain a keyword).
Get as many friends and family members as you can to download and review your app.
Use the name a few times in the description of your app.
Improve the text in your app description and info sections on the listing.
Give it some time and perform ASO (APP Store Optimization)
Promote your application across different platforms like Blogs, youtube, Facebook pages.
Use ad services like google ads or Facebook ads to gain organic users.
I published an application with a unique name "Weather++" one month back and It's ranked with the help of ASO and proper keywords. It has 1000+ reviews and 50,000+ downloads in a short period of time.
So remember….
(Formula for my success)
ASO + App Markeetring + Reviews = App Ranking
ASO+ AM+ R = AR
Play store rank apps on top based on good ASO and deep links associated with apps along with downloads and reviews. (Always remember to gain organic users)
I am working on an Android 4+ app that is free and includes some In-App Purchase items. Some testers are participating in the current beta-test and once the final version is published I would like to let these testers use the IAP items for free.
Is there some "easy" or official way to do this?
This will be my first app in the Play Store (only worked for iOS so far) and I do not know if there is any possibility to create promo codes or something like this to let users purchase non-free IAP items for free.
The only solution I found so far would be some kind of back door within the app, e.g. "Go to page XY, click twice on image A to bring up the unlock screen, enter your username and key..."
Of course this would work but I do not like this solution. Beside the additional work to implement such a solution it would not be really save. I do not know most of my testers in person and if one decides to publish his unlock key on the internet I cannot prevent all kind users from unlocking the app for free (at least not in the current version).
So, is there any way within the Play Store API to get this working?
Short answer: No!
Detailed answer and a possible way to do this:
Right in the Developer Console --> Settings --> License Testing Panel. There you can add up to 400 eMail adresses. Anyone who's using one of those eMail adresses is able to make test-purchases, this means they won't be charged but the Google Server will respond with something like "Yeah he/she bought this item".
Limitation: It's meant test purchases, mainly for applications that aren't published.
From the docs:
You can use any Google account as a test account. Test accounts are
useful if you want to let multiple people test In-app Billing on
applications without giving them access to your publisher account's
sign-in credentials. If you want to own and control the test accounts,
you can create the accounts yourself and distribute the credentials to
your developers or testers.
Though it's still possible to make test-purchases in published application. But there's one major drawback: The purchase will be cancelled automatically after 14 days.
Quote from the docs:
Test purchases are real orders and Google Play processes them in the
same way as other orders. When purchases are complete, Google Play
prevents the orders from going to financial processing, ensuring that
there are no actual charges to user accounts, and automatically
canceling the completed orders after 14 days.
To sum it up: The In-App Billing API doesn't offer an official way to do something like this. If you wanna do this you have to implement your own solution.
See also this SO-Post "Coupons for In-App Billing" which discusses this topic as well.