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Migrate from Google Play Billing to Amazon IAP

This page discusses the differences between Google Play Billing and Amazon In-app Purchasing (IAP) and gives a high-level description of how to adapt your app to use both API sets.

What are Google Play Billing and IAP?

The Google Play Billing feature allows users purchase digital content directly from your app. For example, a user can purchase additional levels to a game. Amazon IAP is the equivalent feature for the Amazon Appstore. If your app uses Google Play Billing, you can easily modify your code to use the Amazon IAP feature. Both API sets have similar functionality with some differences in naming and terminology.

Requirements for the Amazon Appstore and Amazon devices

If your app implements Google Play Billing, you need to implement Amazon IAP to submit your app to the Amazon Appstore.

Appstore SDK versus Google Play Billing

This section discusses the similarities and differences between Google Play Billing and Appstore SDK.

Feature comparison

The table below shows a comparison between the Amazon IAP API and Google Play Billing API.

Feature Amazon IAP Google Play Comments
Purchases
Intents handled by API. Y N
Framework of simple API calls provided. Y N
Consumables
Individual consumables may be purchased multiple times. Y Y
Entitlements
Purchased once. Users notified if they try to purchase an entitlement they already own. Y Y
Subscriptions
Variety of options for time period that a subscription runs. Y Y Amazon IAP options: Weekly, Bi-weekly, Monthly, Bi-monthly, Quarterly, Semi-annually, Annually Google Play options: Monthly, Annually, Seasonal (custom)
Supports free trial periods. Y Y
Auto-renew option. Y Y
Deferred billing option. N Y
Receipt verification
Receipt verification service for purchases Y Y Although Google Play does provide receipt verification, Google Play receipt verification process is not automated.

Google Play managed objects vs. Amazon consumables and entitlements

Google Play Billing and Amazon IAP both let your customers make the same types of in-app purchases. However, Google Play and Amazon use different terminology for their purchase types. The following table notes the Google Play equivalent for each Amazon purchase type:

Amazon Description Google Play Equivalent Examples
Consumable Purchase that is made, then consumed within the app, typically a game. May be purchased multiple times. Managed product Extra lives or moves (within a game), extra ammunition for an in-game character.
Entitlement One-time purchase to unlock access to features or content within an app or game. Managed product Unlock extra levels within a game or "premium member only" features within an app.
Subscription Offers access to a premium set of content or features for a limited period of time. Subscription Online magazine subscription, fantasy football league access.

As you can see, Google Play Billing treats all non-subscription purchases similarly; an item is purchased, then consumed by a user. Once an item has been consumed, the item is provisioned in the app and the consumption is recorded. For items that are likely to be one-time purchases, such as unlocking new game levels, you have the option as a developer of treating the item as a consumable or non-consumable and introducing logic to ensure that the purchase of that item only occurs once. With Amazon IAP, one-time purchases (entitlements) are separated by design from purchases that app users can purchase multiple times (consumables).

Porting your code

This section will walk you through porting an app from Google Play Billing API to the Amazon IAP API:

  1. Configure your AndroidManifest.xml file to support Amazon IAP.
  2. Configure the Appstore SDK.
  3. In your app, implement logic to mediate between Google Play Billing and IAP.
  4. Add and implement the Amazon IAP API.
  5. Test your app.

Configuring your AndroidManifest.xml file

Configure your AndroidManifest.xml file to define the IAP ResponseReceiver for your app. The IAP ResponseReceiver ensures that the intent communication from the Amazon Client is intercepted by your app. If you are supporting both Google Play Billing and Amazon IAP, you don't need to remove elements related to Google Play Billing; they will simply be ignored by IAP.

In your AndroidManifest.xml file, add the appropriate <receiver> tag for the IAP ResponseReceiver. If your app targets Android 12 or higher, you must explicitly set android:exported to true in the MainActivity and ResponseReceiver as shown in the following example.

 <application>
 ...
    <activity android:name="com.amazon.sample.iap.entitlement.MainActivity"
              android:label="@string/app_name" android:exported="true" >
        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
        </intent-filter>
    </activity>

    <receiver android:name="com.amazon.device.iap.ResponseReceiver" android:exported="true"
              android:permission="com.amazon.inapp.purchasing.Permission.NOTIFY" >
        <intent-filter>
        <action
            android:name="com.amazon.inapp.purchasing.NOTIFY" />
        </intent-filter>
    </receiver>
 </application>

Implementing logic to mediate between Google Play Billing and IAP

You can use the same code base for your app, regardless of where your app is hosted. Just add logic to your app to determine whether the app was downloaded from the Amazon Appstore or from Google Play. Depending on where the user downloaded the app, run the appropriate methods for either IAP or Google Play Billing.

The following example code determines whether a package was installed from Google Play or the Amazon Appstore:

PackageManager pkgManager = context.getPackageManager();

 String installerPackageName = pkgManager.getInstallerPackageName(context.getPackageName());

 if(installerPackageName.startsWith("com.amazon")) {
 // Amazon
 } else if ("com.android.vending".equals(installerPackageName)) {
 // Google Play
 }

Adding and implementing the Amazon IAP API

For the most part, Amazon IAP works similarly to Google Play Billing. When you create the path in your code to implement the IAP API, you should be able to use a similar logic flow to Google Play, but will need to account for different class and method names.

The following table maps the most frequently used IAP methods to their Google Play equivalents:

PurchasingService method PurchasingListener callback Response object Google Play Equivalent
getUserData() onUserDataResponse() UserDataResponse N/A
getPurchaseUpdates() onPurchaseUpdatesResponse() PurchaseUpdatesResponse queryPurchases()
getProductData() onProductDataResponse() ProductDataResponse getSkuDetails()
purchase() onPurchaseResponse() PurchaseResponse launchBillingFlow()
notifyFulfillment() N/A N/A consumeAsync()

Testing your app

Download and install the App Tester tool to test your Appstore SDK-integrated app. Follow the instructions and links in Testing In-App Purchasing (IAP) to install and use App Tester.

After testing your app locally, you can use the Live App Testing service to beta test your app in a live production environment with a select group of users.


Last updated: Apr 27, 2023