Uplevel your customer experience with Simple Sign-in and Pending Purchases
The latest release of the Appstore SDK introduces two key features to reduce customer friction during the app login and in-app payment approval stages.
Simple Sign-in (SSI) improves the sign-in experience for your apps on Fire OS devices by eliminating the need for customers to remember and manually type their login credentials (user name and password) every time they sign in across multiple devices.
Remembering login credentials for multiple apps is a common pain point for customers when they switch or upgrade to a new device. SSI allows customers to use their existing Amazon Appstore login credentials for your app and log-in to an app on a newly purchased device with a single click. SSI uses secure tokens to represent the identity of your users, eliminating the need to store raw login credentials.
1. Alice signs into your app manually by entering her login credentials, or Alice creates a new account on her device, "Alice's Fire TV," which is registered to her Amazon account.
2. After Alice successfully signs in, or signs up with her new account into your app, your app sends a request to your app server to issue a token representing Alice’s identity.
3. Your server generates a token and returns it back to the app.
4. Your app sends a message to the Simple Sign-in client for consent from Alice to link her login identity with her Amazon account and passes the token along with the request.
5. The Simple Sign-in client prompts Alice to provide her consent for linking accounts.
6. When Alice confirms her approval, the Simple Sign-in client sets up account linking and persists the token along with it on the Simple Sign-in server.
7. The Simple Sign-in client communicates customer consent and the account linking status with your app.
When a customer has previously linked their app account, simple sign-in reduces the required steps. The following diagram shows the simplified flow for new or additional devices.
1. Alice installs your app on another device, "Alice's 2nd Fire TV", which is also registered to her Amazon account. Alice launches the app and navigates to the sign-in flow.
2. Before offering the standard login options, your app sends a message to the Simple Sign-in client to look for any linked accounts that can be used to offer Simple Sign-in.
3. Because Alice's login identity for the app is already linked with her Amazon account, the Simple Sign-in client prompts her to confirm Simple Sign-in using a linked account.
4. After Alice confirms Simple Sign-in, the Simple Sign-in client fetches the link token corresponding to the linked account from the Simple Sign-in server and shares the token with your app.
5. Your app makes a sign-in request to your server using the token. Your server processes and completes the sign-in request by authenticating Alice, using the token. In case of any failures, the Simple Sign-in flow ends and the app gracefully resorts to standard sign-in options.
New metric reports for Simple Sign-in
SSI also includes business metric reporting available to download in the “Reporting” tab of the Appstore Developer Console. For instance, you can see when a customer opts into account linking, when they sign-in using a previously linked account, and details on subsequent sign-in attempts. For more information, see Simple Sign-in Reports.
You can now make it easier for parents and guardians to manage in-app purchasing requests made by their children through the Amazon Kids user profile. With the new Pending Purchases feature, parents can review, approve, or decline in-app purchase (IAP) requests made by their children, giving them more control over transactions.
When the user of a child profile in Amazon Kids requests an in-app purchasing transaction, a notification is sent to the parent where they can approve or decline the purchase through the Parent Dashboard. While waiting for approval, the purchase will be in a pending state, and the in-app purchasing request will only be fulfilled when the parent approves the request. If the parent doesn’t take action, the request will expire after 48 hours.
The pending purchase state is supported by consumable and entitlements IAPs. Subscription IAPs are currently not supported.
For both features, download the latest Appstore SDK. The SDK includes the JAR file, API documentation, and examples utilizing the APIs within your code.
For Simple Sign-in, follow the step-by-step guide for more details. For Pending Purchases, you can integrate in just a few steps.
Once you've integrated the Appstore SDK, use the App Tester tool to verify the Simple Sign-In and Pending Purchases features.
