I am in the process of creating an in-app-billing service. I want to set prices differently for different countries.
When the purchase page is displayed, how can I decide which currency i should use for an In-app-billing item? Do I use the local currency? Or the Android Market Account currency? I could not find any documentation about this. I want to know the rule of judgment to display the correct currency.
See this question and the corresponding answers:
Android Market In-App-Purchase: How to get the currency a user will pay in?
In summary, it's not possible (at the time of my writing this!) to talk to Android Market and get the currency of the user's Android Market account.
Maybe an idea to have a Spinner in your shop screen which allows the user to select the currency to display prices in. Bit of a hack but best alternative I could come up with.
Related
I am having confusion choosing a suitable product type of a commodity in my utility android application.
My application is of a kind where the user is benefitted through the number of 'slots' that they own. Think of it like the length of a ListView. My free application will feature a maximum length of that ListView upto 5. But if a user needs more List Items, they can buy subsequent List Item slots. The user should be able to buy as many as they like at 0.50$ each.
The problem is that, my in-app product neither comes under the definition of a 'managed product' alone, nor does it come under the definition of a 'consumable product' alone. I need the 'slot' product able to be purchased as many times as the user likes. But at same time, i also want Google Play to keep track of the ownership of the amount of slots per user.
As the documentation (and several tutorials out there) suggest:
If i want Google Play to store the purchase information for each item on a per-user basis, i will have to declare my product as a managed (non-consumable) product.
If i want my product able to be purchased many times, i would have to implement consumption for items that can be purchased multiple times.
The predicament is that i want both the features.
One bad solution is that I feature several slot products as unique products (alpha slot, beta slot, ... and so on), and then treat them as the same thing. However, i'd like to know of a solution that's more correct and sensible.
Another solution could be to make use of a separate cloud service to keep track of the number of slots bought by users, but i don't want that. That would be overkill. Also, i'd like to make use of the 'local caching' feature of Google Play Store.
I asked Google Play Developer Support if there were any way that Google Play Store could keep count of consumable in-app products. Turns out, at the moment, it is not possible.
Here is the actual reply (Nov 3, 2016):
I wanted to know whether Play Store also keeps record of the count of a
CONSUMABLE in-app item that a user has bought even after the user
uninstalls and then reinstalls the app?
In short, after user reinstalls, is there any way of knowing as to how many
of a single in-app item has the user ever bought?
Hi,
Thanks for contacting Google Play Developer Support.
I checked into it and the Play Developer Console doesn’t currently
support tracking every individual users every IAP purchase for
developers to see. Luckily, we place a high value on developer
feedback, and I’ll be sure to pass along your specific feedback to our
product team. We’re continually adding new features and functionality,
so please stay tuned.
You can always check the Android Developers Blog for any new features
and updates: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/
We have a mobile app that is our main product.
We need to provide a different price (not just currency conversion) for it for each country store. As we found out (please let me know if this is wrong), the only way to do this is to upload the app separately on each country store (i.e. separate apps).
Is there an easy way to manage these uploads to the 10+ stores we're targeting. By managing I mean uploading the release itself on all needed country stores as well as monitoring all apps KPIs like number of installs.
When you upload an app in your Google Play Dev Console, click in Prices and Distribution form into the left menu, and then in Automatic conversion price form check "Overwrite existing prices". Now you can personalize your price by country.
Is there a way in Google In-app payment API, to set the item's price from the app?
I'd like to create a donate-my-app button in my app. There'll be some pre-defined donation amounts (eg 1$, 5$, 10$, and so on).
But I'd like to offer a donation method, where my users can choose how many money will they donate to me. Is there a way to impelent this in Google In-app payment service?
As far as I know, not possible.
From the Google Play Console, you can set pre-defined SKUs for each amount.
Then, list those amounts in your app. Whenever a user selects one amount, make them actually "purchase" that SKU item. That way you get the money (minus the fee Google applies).
Other than that, if you want custom amounts, Try PayPal. It has an Android SDK https://github.com/paypal/PayPal-Android-SDK. (Personally, never used it).
Is it possible to get product price in local currency from the app itself. For example if I am selling Product1 with price of 1$ through Google Play In App billing. A customer from UK clicks on a button to purchase the product and the price at Google Play is shown in GBP. Can I get localized price in the app from Google Play so I can display it to the customer in its own currency?
The in-app billing v3 claims to be able to accomplish this:
The API also introduces a long-anticipated feature: the ability to query in-app product information directly from Google Play. Developers can now programmatically obtain an item's title, description and price. No currency conversion or formatting is necessary: prices are reported in the user's currency and formatted according to their locale
Source: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2012/12/in-app-billing-version-3.html
Since you are asking this i suggest to just leave as it is.
This is more about economy rather than programming, and the problem is that the ratio between 2 currencies keeps changing every time and there is no way to calculate this because of the market and the actual evaluation is only given by the stock markets for a particular point in time.
There are 2 ways of thinking about this:
The merchant makes an evaluation about what is the average ratio between 2 currencies, he quantifies this value in real money and adds it to the final price, so he can avoid money loss or at least a good part of it
The merchant puts in place a mechanism for prices that, given real-time infos from the stock markets ( probably you have to pay for this ), calculates prices of real goods in real time or every time that the user wants to checkout his order.
If this is new to you don't say nothing about this, there are a lots of money that are burning and magically appearing every day in every stock exchange market, if you give a bad advice to your client he can be really disappointed and lose a lot of money.
Also different currencies are usually handled directly by credit card services, there is no reason to handle this by yourself, you can only risk more than it's worth doing it.
If your users wants to know the price in their currency teach them to use Google or some reliable online currency converter.
i just can't find it anywhere, so i'd appreciate and help on this :=)
I read about it, and it should be possible, for instance,
I want to set a Dollar price for an App# 3,99 USD,
while the price in Euros is just 2,49 (about) €
So that the values fit, and there isn't something like 3,74 USD ;=) (maybe it frightens some customers ;=P)
Would be great if anyone could tell me where to set this in the Android Developer Console?
Thanks a lot,
best regards,
Mike
Unfortunately I believe this feature is not yet available for you. It is currently only available in the US. Below excerpts are taken from my documentation:
Over the next few months, Android Market will be transitioning towards offering
applications priced in the buyer's home currency, rather than the merchant's
(developer's) home currency. This feature will be rolling out in stages,
country by country. As an Android Market merchant, you will be notified by email
when we are ready to release the feature in your locale and action is required from
you -- at that time you must visit the Developer Console and and set prices for your
apps in all available currencies.
If you have not received an email, it is not available in your market yet.
Availability:
This feature is not available in all countries and currencies at this time. Currently
only US merchants are able to set prices in EUR, CAD, CHF, DKK, GBP, NOK and SEK currencies.