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I am just finishing up an android app and would like to add a subscribe button to the app for a monthly subscription to use the app. What would be the best payment integration to use? Can I use paypal and still put the app on google play store? Thankss

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closed as off topic by Ken White, John Conde, K-ballo, Kumar Bibek, Sergey Glotov Dec 27 '12 at 4:56


2 Answers 2

up vote 6 down vote accepted

No, you are not allowed to sell app content through paypal, if you publish your app in the Play store, per Google Developer content policy:


App purchases:

Developers charging for applications and downloads from Google Play must do so by using Google Play's payment system.

In-app purchases:

Developers offering additional content, services or functionality within an application downloaded from Google Play must use Google Play's payment system as the method of payment, except: where payment is primarily for physical goods or services (e.g. buying movie tickets; e.g. buying a publication where the price also includes a hard copy subscription); or where payment is for digital content or goods that may be consumed outside of the application itself (e.g. buying songs that can be played on other music players) Developers must not mislead users about the applications they are selling nor about any in-app services, goods, content or functionality they are selling.

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You can use : -

  1. Paypal

  2. In App purchase API for android

Both are easy to integrate as there are API's provided by both of them.

Although in Paypal you will not be charged 30% of total amount paid by user as in In App purchase.

But I am not sure if you will get an option in paypal to maintain purchases for each user and you might need your server side to maintain all the purchases(in case where user uninstall and reinstalls your app or clear app data).

Nutshell :- In app purchase is easier to maintain as you can always know which user has paid what. But you pay 30% to google.

paypal saves you 30% but you have to maintain purchases by your own

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That's just wrong, its against the market policy to publish an application that charges users with a 3rd party application. –  K-ballo Dec 27 '12 at 4:24
Yep. You can't combine Paypal with Google Play. If you really want people to subscribe through paypal, don't publish it on the play store , rather distribute your app through other markets/channels. Then you don't have that obligation of giving Google a 30% cut. Paypal fees are considerably lower. –  Kumar Bibek Dec 27 '12 at 4:27
