In-App Subscriptions

Subscriptions provide an excellent opportunity to create continuing revenue streams. Subscriptions are similar to digital goods offered through In-app Billing but made available on a recurring monthly or annual basis.

When users purchase subscriptions in your apps, Google Play handles all checkout details so your apps never have to directly process any financial transactions. Google Play processes all payments for subscriptions through Google Wallet, just as it does for standard in-app products and app purchases. This ensures a consistent and familiar purchase flow for your users and reduces cart abandonment rates.

At a basic level you can offer use of your apps or access to their content on a subscription basis, using a free trial subscription to allow users to explore the apps or content.

A more advanced approach is to offer specific features or content items as subscriptions within your apps. This way you can offer users basic or core features or content for free or part of the initial purchase and extended features or content as subscriptions. You can have multiple subscriptions active in an app at any one time.

To get started with subscriptions you need to set-up a Google Wallet Merchant Account from the Developer Console. You then define subscriptions for published or draft apps in the In-app Products section of the Developer Console, integrate the In-app Billing API into your apps, and add the mechanisms to unlock subscribed features or deliver content.