page.title=In-app Billing
page.metaDescription=Sell digital content as one-time purchases inside your app.
page.image=/images/play_dev.jpg
meta.tags="monetizing, inappbilling, subscriptions"
page.tags="billing, inapp, iap"
@jd:body
In-app Billing is a Google Play service that lets you sell digital content from inside
your applications. You can use the service to sell a wide range of content, including downloadable
content such as media files or photos, virtual content such as game levels or potions, premium services
and features, and more. You can use In-app Billing to sell products as
New in In-App Billing
- Subscription Upgrade/Downgrade—A user can
subscribe to a higher or lower tier of subscription while their current
subscription is active. The old subscription is canceled, and the unused
portion is applied on a pro-rated basis to the new subscription.
- Manual Subscription Renewal—A user can purchase
a subscription at the current rate while their existing subscription is
still active. The existing subscription is extended by the appropriate
period.
- IAB Sandbox—The In-app Billing Sandbox now supports
testing subscription purchases.
- IAB v2 shutdown—In-app Billing v2 API is deprecated
and will be shut down in January 2015. If your app is still using In-app Billing
v2, please migrate to the v3 API as soon as possible.
- Seasonal subscriptions—You can now set up a
recurring seasonal
subscription that starts and ends on the same date each year (for
example, a sports subscription that starts every September 1 and ends every
April 10).
- Deferred subscription billing—You can
defer a
subscriber's next billing date until the date you choose. The user still has
access to the content but is not charged during the deferral period.
- Weekly subscriptions—You can now set up a
recurring subscription
that bills the user every week.
- Payment grace period—If a subscriber misses a
subscription payment due to an expired credit card, you can define a
grace period
to the continue the subscription until payment is successful.
- Standard in-app products (one-time billing), or
- Subscriptions (recurring, automated billing)
When you use the in-app billing service to sell an item,
whether it's an in-app product or a subscription, Google Play
handles all checkout details so your application never has to directly process
any financial transactions. Google Play uses the same checkout backend service as
is used for application purchases, so your users experience a consistent and
familiar purchase flow.
Any application that you publish through Google Play can implement In-app Billing. No special
account or registration is required other than a Google Play Developer Console account and a Google
Wallet merchant account.
To help you integrate in-app billing into your application, the Android SDK
provides a sample application that demonstrates how to sell standard in-app
products and subscriptions from inside an app.
To get started, read the documents below or take the Selling
In-app Products training class.
- Overview
- Read this document for a description of the underlying concepts in In-app Billing.
- Version 3 API
- Read the documents in this section for an overview of the latest version of In-app Billing, as well as implementation details and API reference.
- Security
and Design
- Review these best practices to help ensure that your In-app Billing implementation is
secure and well designed.
- Testing In-app
Billing
- Understand how the In-app Billing test tools work and learn how to test your In-app Billing
implementation.
- Administering
In-app Billing
- Learn how to set up your product list, register test accounts, and handle refunds.