About IAP Technology

Generalities about IAP technologies that all developers have to know.

Present on both iOS (with AppStore) and Android (with Google Play as the most popular option), In-App Purchase (IAP) lets you integrate a variety of virtual products that users can purchase right from your application.

Virtual Products

You can offer 4 types of virtual products:

• Consumable products

  • For virtual currencies or similar (gems, gold, lives, ...).

  • Stuff that can be purchased (and consumed) multiple times.

• Non-Consumable products

  • For unlocking a premium feature.

  • Stuff that can be purchased only once.

• Auto-Renewing Subscriptions.

  • Subscriptions that will be renewed automatically every period, until canceled by the user.

• Non-Renewing Subscriptions.

  • Temporary subscriptions that users have to renew manually.

Google Play actually only makes the difference between products incurring recurring or non-recurring payments, i.e. Auto-Renewing Subscriptions vs everything else. But iOS has a strict differentiation between those 4 categories. As such the plugin provides the logic for those 4 categories on both platforms so you can write one code that works everywhere.

User Accounts

Purchases are linked to a user's AppStore / Google account. As such, it's made available on all devices for this user.

Test Accounts

With both the AppStore and Google Play, you can create Test Users that do not pay for the purchases they make. We'll show you how to achieve this.