Developers
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.