In-app purchases: courses and memberships through Google Play and the App Store
Google Play and the App Store ask apps to sell digital content, such as courses and memberships that open courses, through their own payment. With In-app purchases, your app does exactly that: people buy with Google Play or the App Store, and Yallapp gives them the course, or the membership until it ends. It comes with every plan but Starter, for academies whose courses are in your dashboard, on your WordPress site, on Teachable or Thinkific, or on your own API.
Google and Apple pay you directly, into your own developer accounts, and keep their fee (15% to 30%, depending on your program with each store). Physical things and services, such as shop products, restaurant orders, appointments and tickets, keep your card payment page.
Turn it on
- Open In-app purchases in your dashboard menu.
- Under Selling in the app, choose Sell my courses and memberships in the app and select Save.
- Under Your store accounts, select Check. Yallapp uses the keys you saved on the Publishing step.
Yallapp then makes a product for each paid course, and a monthly or yearly subscription for each membership plan, in your own store accounts. Your app shows the buy buttons from its next version.
Google Play
- Your service account needs the rights View financial data, Manage orders and subscriptions and Manage store presence (Play Console › Users and permissions).
- Your Play Console needs a payments profile to sell, and your app must be uploaded once with in-app purchases before Google accepts its products: send your next build to Google Play (internal testing is enough).
- Optional: in Play Console › Monetization setup, enter the topic shown on the In-app purchases page under Real-time notifications. Refunds then reach your app within seconds; without it they arrive within the hour.
App Store
- Your App Store Connect key needs the App Manager role.
- Your Paid Applications agreement, tax and banking must be active in App Store Connect (Business).
- Apple reviews new in-app purchases with the next version of your app you send for review. Add a review screenshot to each in-app purchase in App Store Connect before you send it.
- Yallapp sets your app's App Store Server Notifications address for you.
Teachable and Thinkific
Your school's paid courses are sold at their one-time price, read from your school. On In-app purchases, under What the app sells, select Change to set a course's price for the app, or Stop selling to leave one out. Add the courses your school sells only by subscription or payment plan, and your membership plans with the IDs of the courses they open.
A buyer is enrolled in your school as the student the app shows courses to. When a refund or the end of a membership takes the access back, Yallapp unenrolls them only from what the app gave, never from a course they bought on your website. On Thinkific, a membership's enrolments end a day after its paid period unless it renews.
Your own API
Your app needs Yallapp to sign people in (App sign-in). On In-app purchases, under What the app sells, add each paid course with its ID in your API, its title and price, and each membership plan with its ID, price, monthly or yearly, and the IDs of the courses it opens. Stop selling leaves one out; the people who bought it keep it.
Your developer adds what the app needs to your API, and takes Yallapp's signed notice of each purchase, renewal and refund: see Sell in the app. Until your API confirms a purchase, the buyer doesn't get the course. For your developer lists the notices of the last 30 days, with Send again for a failed one.
Prices
Each product starts at the store price nearest your site's price: Google Play keeps your price exactly in your own currency, and the App Store uses its nearest price point. The stores show each person the price in their own currency. To charge something else in the app, enter Your price next to a product and select Save; leave it empty for the site's price. When a membership's price changes, the people already subscribed keep their price.
Testing
Add yourself as a license tester in Play Console (Settings › License testing) and as a Sandbox tester in App Store Connect (Users and Access › Sandbox). Test purchases cost nothing and never count in your sales.
Refunds and renewals
When Google or Apple refunds a purchase, or a membership isn't renewed, Yallapp takes the access back on its own. Renewals extend the membership. A person who reinstalls the app, or signs in on a new phone, selects Restore purchases to get their purchases back. A purchase belongs to the account that made it: it can't move to another account of your app.
Your sales
Analytics › Sales shows In-app purchases (bought and renewed, before the stores' fee), In-app refunds and Membership renewals, beside the period before. Yallapp Business shows today's in-app sales too. Your payouts and the stores' reports are in Play Console and App Store Connect.