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.
Related
We want to implement the following pricing model for an app in app store and play store.
App users gets 'x' months of free trial. Post trial app user cannot access a particular feature in the app, unless they subscribe to the yearly fee 'y'. They can access other features of the app.
Is this possible?
if not, what is the closest that can be done?
Yes, It's possible.
If you publish your app in google play store, you can use in-app purchase and set up item on google play console. I don't know about apple store, but I think it's the same.
If you want to implement that independent with google play store or app store. I think you should implement on the server side, or you can try Firebase & Firebase App Config for your app.
I'm not trying that before, but I think Firebase can solve your problem in simple way.
I am developing an application for iOS and Android and this app will be free on the store, but to use all features of the app, the user will need to pay a licence every month/year and if he doesn't pay it, he will have only a limited access to the app, with just few features. Moreover, the first month after he registers, he will have full access.
To pay the licence, it'll can be done in the app or on the website.
For that, do I need to develop a function to check on each connection my database to see if the user has paid, or is there already something done. I have look for "in app purchasing" but it seems that it works only for app where we pay once to have full features, and not every month.
Thank you :)
Regards,
There is a system in in-app-purchase for this, just check the url: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202023 and "Auto-renewing subscriptions" tab
you can go for in app purchase / in app billing
iOS,
In-App Purchase lets you sell a variety of items directly within your free or paid app, including premium content, virtual goods, and subscriptions. And just like apps you sell on the App Store, you receive 70% of the purchase price.
https://developer.apple.com/in-app-purchase/
Android
Use In-app Billing to sell digital goods, including one-time items and recurring subscriptions.
Supported for any app published on Google Play. You only need a Google Play Developer Console account and a Google payments merchant account.
Checkout processing is automatically handled by Google Play, with the same look-and-feel as for app purchases.
http://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/billing_overview.html
It has been asked before but most of those answers are probably outdated.
I am thinking in integrating Paypal api (https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/mobile/ht_mpl-itemPayment-Android/) for my android application.
It is a link that says - Buy me a coffee, which will lead through the process of making a payment using above JAR.
Before I implement so, I have heard that many have some problem where Google has taken their application out of the market because it uses someone else payment option.
Also, any thoughts on https://github.com/SufficientlySecure/donations
Please advise.
Also, any thoughts on https://github.com/SufficientlySecure/donations
Here goes note taken right from the README:
NOTE: Google mailed me to remove PayPal donation capability when publishing on Google Play! Thus, you should build "product flavors" defined by the example: One version with Google Play donation capability and one with Paypal, Flattr, and Bitcoin!
Which means that Google is against PayPal donations in the apps loaded into the Google Play Store.
I've read the Developer Policy and it looks unclear. On one hand they say that all purchases in Android apps available on the Google Play Store should be made via Google Play Billing API. On the other hand, they say nothing about the donations (which differ from purchases in my opinion because user gets nothing for donation).
I would not risk the app's status and make donations via Billing API - after all, the main reason why Google bans apps which use 3-rd party billing is that Google doesn't get money from 3-rd party billing. If this is the case than you should be safe if you stay away from PayPal.
When an user installs an Android App from Google Play, he/she has to login with a Google Account: does exists an Android API for getting which Google Account has been used for the App installation?
I would like to sell my App from Google Play, but I would give to the buyer a free trial period. I can't use subscriptions because they require a recurring payment (monthly or yearly), whereas I would set a una-tantum price.
When the trial period expire, I can use a non-consumable In-app product, but how can I manage the trial period?
Both Google Play Licensing and In-app Billing track purchase information on a per-user basis, thus they should be able to know which user has downloaded the App or who is the current user, and I too would like to know the same info in order to manage the trial period by means my web server.
If someone of you can suggest another way, I appreciate.
There is no such API to include in your app's code to keep record of user who have downloaded your app from Play Store. However before you upload your app to Play Store , you have to create a Developers account.
There google have provided Developer Console option, and this is where you will find download information for your app.
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.