1. Monetize your app with Google
Subscriptions V3 services:
Benefits and best practices
Manohar Mahapatra
Intuit

2. Why choose Android
In-App Billing

3. Types of In-App Billing
• Standard in-app products (one-time billing)
• Subscriptions, (recurring, automated billing)

4. Its Hassle Free
• Google Play handles all credit card related
activities for the user of your app.
• Stores the card details along with Google
Wallet . No need to enter the data again
during the time of purchase.
• Charges the app user’s card and credits your
Google Merchant account.

5. Its Free for developers
• 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.

6. Preparing Your In-app Billing
Application

7. Download the Sample
Application
• The sample files will be installed to
<sdk>/extras/google/play_billing/.

8. Add Your Application to the Developer
Console
• In the Services & APIs tab, find and make a
note of the public license key that Google Play
generated for your application

9. Add the In-app Billing Library
• To use the In-app Billing Version 3
features, you must add the
IInAppBillingService.aidl file to your Android
project.
• This Android Interface Definition Language
(AIDL) file defines the interface to the Google
Play service.

10. IInAppBillingService.aidl

11. Set the Billing Permission
• To have permission to communicate request
and response messages to the Google Play’s
billing service, add this line in your
AndroidManifest.xml manifest file:
• <uses-permission
android:name="com.android.vending.BILLING
" />

12. Initiate a Connection with Google Play
• You must bind your Activity to Google
Play’s In-app Billing service to send Inapp Billing requests to Google Play
from your application.

13. Establishing In-app Billing
Products for Sale

14. Specify In-app Products in Google Play
• Build a signed APK file for your In-app Billing
application. Make sure that you are using your
final (not debug) certificate and private key to
sign your application.
• Click on the APK tab then click on Upload new
APK. Don’t publish the app yet!
• Navigate to the uploaded app listing, and click
on In-app Products.

16. • Complete the form to specify the product
information such as the item’s unique product
ID (also called its SKU), description, price, and
country availability
• Once you have completed the form, activate
the product so that your application can
purchase.

18. Query Items Available for Purchase
• You can query Google Play to
programmatically retrieve details of the in-app
products that are associated with your
application (such as the product’s
price, title, description, and type)

20. Purchase an Item
• To start a purchase request from your
app, call launchPurchaseFlow(Activity, String,
int, OnIabPurchaseFinishedListener, String) o
n your IabHelper instance. You must make
this call from the main thread of your Activity.

22. Query Purchased Items
• To retrieve the user’s purchases from your
app, queryInventoryAsync(QueryInventoryFini
shedListener) on your IabHelper instance.

23. Consume a Purchase
• You must send a consumption request for the
item before Google Play makes it available for
purchase again. All managed in-app products
are consumable. Subscriptions need not be
consumed.

24. Testing Your In-app Billing
Application

25. Test with Static Responses
• Test your In-app Billing application with static
responses by using Google Play’s reserved
product IDs.
• There are four reserved product IDs for
testing static In-app Billing responses:
1.
2.
3.
4.
android.test.purchased
android.test.canceled
android.test.refunded
android.test.item_unavailable

26. Test with Your Own Product IDs
• In the Developer Console, add one or more
tester accounts to the developer account that
you are using to publish your application.
– Click Settings > Account details, then in
the License Testing section, add the Google
email addresses for your tester accounts.
• Build a signed and final (not debug) certificate
APK file for your In-app Billing.

27. • Make sure that you have uploaded the signed
APK for your application to the Developer
Console.You don't need to publish the
application on Google Play to test
• Install the APK file to your physical test device
by using the adb tool.
• Login to the test device by using a tester
account.

28. Important Security Considerations
• Perform signature verification tasks on a
server so that this makes it difficult for
attackers to break the verification process by
reverse engineering your .apk file.
• Modify all sample application code
• Set the developer payload string when making
purchase requests.
• Protect your Google Play public key.

29. Thank You