I understand that google does not allow the transfer of app ownership with in app-subscription from one developer account to another. I have been waiting for them to enable that feature but till now, it is not available and there is no ETA on it.
I have a paid app with in-app-subscription as part of it. A company is looking to acquire my app but the transfer is not possible. So I am thinking about alternatives.
Should I create another identifcal app and ask users in my old app to move to this new identical app. That will involve buying it again but I can provide incentive (like enabling the subscription feature to be free).. Other suggestions? Basically what would you do in my case
Thank you so much
Ask your new company owner to be added to your Google Play console as developer and give him access to financial data, so he could see income/revenue.
Create new app identical to the previous one, implement same subscriptions. This time in owners Google Play console.
Kindly ask your users to move to the new app and let them know that their subscriptions will be still active.
Implement on server side code to check if subscriptions are valid for particular users.
When new app is published, unpublish old app. I think subscribtions will be still active(check docs).
All new users will get subscriptions from new app.
Anyway you will have to introduce new SKU for subscriptions from time to time, because Google doesn't update prices, and currencies are changing every year.
You can transfer apps with in-app subsriptions to a new developer account. And you need pay extra attention to linked project if you used Play Developer APIs to verify the purchases or used other integrated services.
After the transfering process, the renewal orders will be visible in the Play Console under the new developer account while the previous orders will only be visible under your current account.
Related
Google Play IAP allows the developer to set up offers in the app subscription with trials and discounts.
If the offer is a developer determined offer the developer can add logic to the backend or frontend to allow a user to subscribe with that offer depending on some condition.
This works great, but how about applying an offer to an already existing subscription?
Imagine the following scenario:
I have a referral system in my app, if the user invites someone to the app and that person subscribes to a plan, both users will receive a 20% discount.
To do that for the new user is easy, I just add that offer during that user subscription.
But for the old user, I'm not sure how to do that, since that user already has a subscription going, I can't find any API here that would allow me to apply this offer to his existing subscription.
Is that possible somehow? Or is there some workaround to make a referral system like this work with Google Play IAP subscriptions?
I want to transfer my app with subscriptions to another company, but it seems that it was not possible before, and the document of google is vague.
Does anyone know if it is still not possible or is there any good way to do that like transferring the developer account itself?
Transferring android app with subscription to another account
Android Developer Console - Change app owner
It is allowed nowadays! You can transfer apps with in-app subsriptions to a new developer account. And you need pay extra attention to linked project if you used Play Developer APIs to verify the purchases or used other integrated services. After the transfering process, the renewal orders will be visible in the Play Console under the new developer account while the previous orders will only be visible under your current account.
We already have an app on Google Play with in app purchases (as subscriptions), and there are lots of users who already purchased our subscriptions. However, we have developed a new version of this app from scratch and we want to list it on Google Play as a new app. After few months, we want to unpublish the old version of it. There is one issue with this: How do we make sure that users who already purchased subscriptions in the old app keep their subscriptions in the new one? It seems like there is no way around this other than asking them to purchase on the new one. But maybe there is a better idea than that?
P.S. We are publishing as totally new listing because of significant changes in the app and also the old one wasn't taken care of properly, therefore there were many bad ratings. This would be a fresh start.
Maybe , there is a way.
From Your Old App Obtain 2 things
GOOGLE API KEY FOR IN APP PURCHASE
product id (is unique everytime)
Inside the java code, check all the purchase history for this particular product from Billing object.
This library is excellent in simplyfing in-app purchases.
https://github.com/anjlab/android-inapp-billing-v3
I'm pretty sure there is no way to tell the play store that the user has bought a subscription for the new app. You could update the old app to send subscription data to a server which can mark the user as having bought a subscription, and then the server can validate the new app to deliver subscription content. But the play store will not know anything about it.
Okay, something really dumb happened to my friend.
He submitted an Android application a few weeks ago that offers In-App Purchases to the user.
Now, he needed to update the .apk to fix a bug, but he actually lost the keystore that he used to sign the application the other day (what a dumbass...). He tells me it's definitely lost. He exhausted all options to find or restore it, but without success. So, as he understands, the only way to submit the update is to actually create a new application in the Google Play Developer Console. He is so dumb, I always tell him to do backups of important files, he just won't listen (wow, really, such a blockhead...)!!!! sigh...
Luckily, he only had a handful of users who actually purchased something in his app during that time. However, I would like to know (for my friend) if there is any way to transfer the In App Purchases from the same user from the old app to the new one, so that the users who bought something in the app and now want to update it, won't get punished for his stupidity and have to purchase the same items again....
AFAIK, there is no way to do that. The only option is to refund them and ask them to buy again in the new app. I believe refunding can be done by logging in to Merchant account.
Google Play does not provide any form of content delivery. You are
responsible for delivering the digital content that you sell in your
applications. In-app products are always explicitly associated with
one and only one app. That is, one application cannot purchase an
in-app product published for another app, even if they are from the
same developer.
And BTW, Does the app have any backend? Where in he saved data of all purchases made?
I have looked around on the internet and cannot find anything on this topic. If my app is a game and I want users to buy tokens from me for a price and they pay one dollar for 100 tokens, how can I make my app communicate with google and bring up a menu so they can purchase through google? Is there any tutorials on this subject?
To make sure people understand it, If my app has an Activity which has a button that reads "100 tokens for 1$" Then another button that reads "500 tokens for 2$" and they click either button, it will bring up a google popup that says purchase. Then it uses their google account information through the app market to purchase the tokens. Many apps have this feature so I hope you know what I am talking about.
Please help me out, and thanks.
Also, I have looked at In-App Billing and they say you must post your app on the Google Play market complete the In-App Billing process. How can I add my app to Google Play without users being able to download or even see it. I want to upload for only developing reasons
In-App Billing is indeed the correct approach for having user purchases within your application. As you mentioned, this is only available via Google Play published apps. However, if you do not want to publish your app publically, you can use Google Play's Beta-testing program to upload an app to Google Play but only make it available to a specific group of people (those who you allow to join a Google Group or Google+ Community).
As long as you never publish a production version and only publish to the alpha/beta channel in the Google Play Developer Console, then you can create an app that utilizes In-App Billing without being public.