I have gone through most of the links here on stackoverflow and i have some doubts regarding InApp Subscriptions and Google Wallet.
What i know:
InApp Subscriptions basically allows a user to be able to subscribe to an app, say for example if it offers one year trial period, then once thats over, Google automatically handles the subscriptions then after.
Google Wallet, its a method that can be used to perform the purchase. What i don't understand is, can i use this method in order to allow users to use the app for one year, and then make them pay for the next years?
Billing continues indefinitely at the interval and price specified for the subscription. At each subscription renewal, Google Play charges the user account automatically, then notifies the user of the charges afterward by email. For monthly and annual subscriptions, billing cycles will always match subscription cycles, based on the purchase date. (Seasonal subscriptions are charged annually, on the first day of the season.)
This is what happens in my app:
1. A user logs in, and i get a date that probably keeps track of the billing cycle
2. If the sessions expired, the user is asked to pay using the inApp Billing serivce
3. Based on TrivailDriveApp Example, where we have the success log printed on subscription, we update the date of payment.
Some questions i have:
As per the quote from android, if the user is automatically subscribed to the service, and if a mail is sent to the user, does that mean that i would never be able to get a notification about the payment extension? How do i sync that with the server then?
Is my approach wrong in handling this kind of scenario? Or do i have to select a different method of handling app extensions?
P.S: There is no way of testing inapp subscriptions also. I wonder if i could do that without using real credit/debit card credentials.
EDIT:
I would also want to keep track of when the purchase or billing was done, if subscriptions are auto-renewed, then should i take up the purchase flow as an InApp Product instead of an InApp Subscription?
Please help.
Related
I am providing levels in app (easy(unlocked),fun,crazy,hard)
want the users to buy only once and when they return they should have subscription.
I achieved it by saving in room database
But if I don't consume purchase it gets refunded. If I consume purchase when user comes back he has to buy again (the restore does not works)
What could be the solution?
If we use Subscriptions they are for specific period of time and user has to pay again for renewal but I want them permanent stick with that user.
For non-consumed purchases you need to acknowledge them or they will be automatically refunded in a couple days.
From the docs:
Note: If you do not acknowledge a purchase within three days, the user automatically receives a refund, and Google Play revokes the purchase.
I am using InAppBilling version 3 in my app, I am able to purchase subscriptions using test account. Now my question is how do I know the billing details in my app againt one subscription plan. Suppose I have purchase one plan and it renews Daily, Is there any provision or method to know that renew is done to this product with details(like for ex. product_id, time, date, update, renewing_status...etc). I have refered to this link.
And the other thing is that do a user can subscribed to multiple subscription at a time ?
After searching quite a bit, finally I found my solution. Google don't provide subscription order number for test purchases(if you are using test account to test your application without going to production). It only provide product_id, token, purchase_time, developer_payload, autoRenewing, package_name and purchase_state as if Google don't send details to Play Billing server as it is not a real purchase. Still your can implement your own logic as it provide autoRenewing = true(if product is in renewal state) and false(if product is in non-renewal state) with purchase_state = 0(purchased) , 1(canceled) and 2(refunded). And one more thing I came to know after reading documentation of Google that, test user who has taken the subscriptions the recur on daily basis, but they will only get the same details, which they get while purchasing a test subscription plan.
It provide order Id for real purchases with other details. If your subscription is monthly and your order Id is GPA.1234-5678-9012-34567 while purchasing the plan. Then next month Google append your order Id with GPA.1234-5678-9012-34567..0(second month) , GPA.1234-5678-9012-34567..1 (third month) and so on. So you can track your renewal of purchases with order Id as described in here. Rest are same.
In my android app using in-app subscription monthly plan. I have purchased a subscription product with test account. After one hour I cancelled it manually from my phone.
After I query using inventory.getPurchase(monthlyplan), I always get purchase state is 0.
I waited more than one day; still getting response of purchase state is 0. Can any one help me on this?
You may want to check this document - Subscription Cancellation:
Users can view the status of all of their subscriptions and cancel them if necessary from the My Apps screen in the Play Store app. Currently, the In-app Billing API does not provide support for programatically canceling subscriptions from inside the purchasing app.
When the user cancels a subscription, Google Play does not offer a refund for the current billing cycle. Instead, it allows the user to have access to the canceled subscription until the end of the current billing cycle, at which time it terminates the subscription. For example, if a user purchases a monthly subscription and cancels it on the 15th day of the cycle, Google Play will consider the subscription valid until the end of the 30th day (or other day, depending on the month).
Important: In all cases, you must continue to offer the content that your subscribers have purchased through their subscriptions, as long any user is able to access it. That is, you must not remove any content while any user still has an active subscription to it, even if that subscription will terminate at the end of the current billing cycle. Alternatively, you can use the refund and revoke API to revoke each subscriber's subscription (one by one) and refund their subscription payments. Removing content that any subscriber is entitled to access will result in penalties. Please see the policies document for more information.
There are some good insights regarding the following (also found in the same document):
App uninstallation
Refunding and revoking subscriptions
Here is a related SO question that also talk about cancelling subscription in-app.
Before I explain my question, let me give an example situation.
A user of a magazine app subscribes to the monthly subscription on the month of August and September. If the user reformats the phone, the app should be able to restore both August and September month's magazines.
The problem with this is that, the In-App Billing API returns only the latest subscription and whether the subscription is active.
Also, I want the users to be able view the previous months' magazines even if they have canceled their subscription.
Is there a way to keep track of all payments made by the user?
This likely would involve your own independent servers and "developer payload" information. As stated in this Subscriptions link:
Include business logic in your app to notify your backend servers of subscription purchases, tokens, and any billing errors that may occur. Your backend servers can use the server-side API to query and update your records and follow up with customers directly, if needed.
In other words, you should be keeping track of this--unfortunately.
Further, you can check this api reference as to whether a user's subscription purchase is valid.
I am developing an application with subscription feature using Inapp Billing v3.There is login mechanism to access the application. If a user 'X' subscribes to a feature and logs out. If user 'Y' logs into application in same device and if the user attempts to subscribe, Google play tells that product is already bought. Are the subscriptions based on account synced in the device and not based on the user who logged onto the application? If so how is it possible to implement my scenario?
Google Play in-app billing subscription is bound to Google Play account. So as long and Google account is not changed the subscription is considered valid for this account and you cannot purchase it one more time.
If you want to substitute Google account system with your own accounts you need to "cheat" Google Play. What you can do is to create a pool of several different in-app billing subscriptions (like subscription #1, subscription #2, etc). When you subscribe you pass your own login as an additional parameter in developerPayload field.
Now when you enumerate all available subscriptions you check if there is one with current user account in the developerPayload field. If not, then you consider that current user has no subscription and allow to subscribe using the first not used yet subscription from the pool of subscriptions (subscription #1, subscription #2, etc) you generated. Just make sure that there is number of subscriptions in your pool is bigger than number of users on the same device you could have.
It is not a straightforward way, but rather a cheat to find a workaround for your situation.
Currently google IAB supports only one account(Primary gmail account on device) on one device. But from Android 4.2 multiuser feature is available and google is working on giving same support for IAB.