Donate via in-app billing

Question

Is it possible to donate money via in-app billing?

If not, how can we implement donation from inside an Android app? Please share a few hints.

Thanks

Answer 1

There isn't really a mechanism for doing donations in in-app billing. Anything you sell needs to be sold as virtual goods - fixed products with fixed prices. It is possible to sell "unmanaged" items which a user could buy over and over again but it'd be really in-convenient for your users.

What you might want to look into is the PayPal in app payments library.

https://www.x.com/community/ppx/xspaces/mobile/mep?view=overview

If you're not selling virtual goods I think it'll give you more flexibility - for instance your users can input the amount they're willing to donate + you can do recurring payments with it ;). Also, it's MUCH easier to integrate with your app than the in-app payments system.

Answer 2

If you are using in-app billing then market will charge 30% for a transaction. While in-app billing requires items to be sold on a fixed price which will give you a little scope if your items are not managed(fixed priced). There is a way to do it from your android app without leaving it by using Paypal libraries.

Paypal integration for android becomes fairly simple if you follow their developer site. You will need to download and integrate the library provided by Paypal, which is available on Paypal developer site.

Sample Pizza application built using Eclipse demonstrate how to do actual integration which is quite simple. Although paypal seems forgot to use relative path for library. So you will have to change library path and application is ready to go.