Yes, SO, I know, it's not a "programmer's" question:) But customers sometimes help us (devs) with our code, so we (devs) shold be grateful. I think answer to my question will be useful for all fellow android devs.
User has purchased my app. Refund period (15min) is over of course. Now I'd like to return money to him as a gift, because he helped me in testing a little.
If I refund the entire order in Checkout->Orders will user keep my app 'purchased'? I mean will he be able to uninstall and install it again from GooglePlay->MyApps and will app be marked "purchased"? Will Google LVL accept him to run the app?
I've done such refunds before, but then they called it "Android Market", and refund was 12h, and there were no LVL. Maybe somebody know another way to make a small gift using Google Play?
Google play has no gifting implemented currently.
Refunding the purchase will automatically uninstall the app from the user's device, and LVL will not accept him as a registered user if he sideloads it.
You can now generate and distribute promo codes for your app or game to current and new users on Google Play.
Under the Promotions tab in the Google Play Developer Console, you can set up promo codes for your apps, games, and in-app products to distribute in your own marketing campaigns (up to 500 codes per app, per quarter):
Go to your Google Play Developer Console, select your app.
Select Promotions > Add new promotion.
Follow the on-screen instructions (promotion name, start and end dates, promotion type, number of promo codes you want to create).
Select Create, select the download link.
Your codes will download to a CSV file. To share with users, you can print the codes or send a deep link allowing users to redeem the codes via email or a notification within your app.
References: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/6321495
http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2016/01/create-promo-codes-for-your-apps-and-in.html
You can't give him a gift. There's no gift concept implemented in Google Play.
All we can do at this time is refund a purchase through the Google Wallet merchant account, after 48 hours (when the customer-initiated refund period expires, which may be different in the future).
If they get a refund from Google it will uninstall the app and remove their access.
If you do it personally from your Wallet merchant account, after 48 hours (or whenever the end is of the customer-initiated refund period), they still get to keep the app and get updates.
I know this is old, but have you thought about asking the customer in question to purchase the app, and then sending him/her the money via PayPal or something? Also, what if you initiate the refund process? In that case, I wouldn't expect the app to be uninstalled, as the user didn't agree to an uninstall.
Related
I have my paid app in Playstore and AppStore. Now as per our requirement I want to convert a paid app as a yearly subscription.
For example, Users purchase the app at $50 and that will be their first-year subscription. Is that possible?
I notice both Playstore and AppStore only have two options for downloading the app that is,
Users can download the app for free.
Users need to pay some amount to download the app, and users can use that app for a lifetime.
So there is no subscription option for downloading the app.
But Playstore and AppStore provide subscription options as In-app purchases.
To achieve my requirement, I have a thought to implement the below idea,
Once users paid and download the app, we will allow the user to use the app for one year. Then after one year, we will ask for the subscription(In-app purchase) when opening the app (without any free content in the app for the user), the user needs to pay to continue to use it. If payment is successful then I allow the user to login the app, if-else the user needs to exit the app.
Will the AppStore and PlayStore accept the above idea?
Is this possible? If not, please suggest a solution for us?
The main goal is users need to pay $50 per year.
Thanks in advance.
re the Play Store. If you want to have a subscription you need to make your app Free and then add your subscription(s).
See in Google Play console
Monetise,
Products,
App Pricing,
In-App products,
Subscriptions
App Pricing - make it Free. Note you can't change back to Paid after making it free, so make sure you understand that before making it free.
Subscriptions - Enter your subscription details and make the subscription active.
Any app that is marked as Free will have an install button on Google Play. If it is a paid app then the user will be prompted to pay for it before they can download it.
A subscription can have a trial period. The user is only charged when the trial period ends or you option to control the trial within your app via your own server etc.
I can’t comment re the Apple Store.
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.
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.
I'm developing a simple in-app billing library. It works with static responses from google, but now I'd like to test this lib with real in-app products.
I have created a test account and I'm trying to buy a product, but google Play is asking me for a credit card. Is there any way to test in-app billing without using a real credit card (a sandbox environment, fake credit card, etc)?
I have read here that the only way to test this is using a real credit card with a test account (so you don't have to pay google taxes) and once you have bought the product, refund it again, but it seems not to be a very 'developer-friendly' way.
Thanks.
Nope it absolutely SUCKS
You have to use a real credit card, then go into Google Play , select View Merchant Account and hit the individual order then refund to get your money back.
sorry!
As of today (or yesterday) Google has finally allowed "sandbox" testing of in app purchases, it goes through all the steps of an in app purchase except the actual charging of the credit card.
Although you will probobly have to wait for the cancelations/refunds like you did before.
More info here and here
Got this info from my developers console.
... and to add to Blundell's answer, it will take close to 6 hrs for refund to be posted, and then you'll probably want to give it another 6 hours before attempting the purchase.... or else.... Or else, what? Oh, I don't know, something like the "you already own this item" bug/glitch/bane of my existence
You can test in-app purchase subscription using testing accounts. For reference please go through the link-
You may use sandbox testing by adding you testers account to play console.
Go to the play console main screen--> setting--> search for license testers--> add your testers email-id there.
Then go to your app release-> go for your beta/alpha release.
Tap on manage testers and share opt-in URL with testers to accept an invite.
https://cheesecakelabs.com/blog/google-play-iap-first-setup-test-sandbox/