In-App Billing: Adding billing on an existing published app

Question

We have an existing app (apk v282) published in Google Play. This app doesn't have in-app products and no BILLING permission.

We have developed an upgrade version (v292) that contains in-app products and BILLING permission.

We face a problem to create the in-app products in Google Play console: When we upload the v292 apk as a draft in Google Play console, we have two APK listed in the draft: the old and the new:

From this page, we have two alternatives:

1- Either we click on "In-app products" on the left list to create our products, we see a page saying:

To add in-app products, you need to add the BILLING permission to your APK.

So we cannot create in-app products, probably because v282 still is in draft configuration.

2- Or, we remove the older v282 APK (that hadnt the BILLING permission), in order to leave only the new v292 in the Draft configuration. But then when clicking on "In-app products", we get a popup warning about the configuration not being saved. But there is no button to save it, only publish. Of course we don't want to publish it as it's under test.

To sum it all up: How to test in-app purchase in an application that was previously published without it?

Answer 1

For everyone looking for a solution to this: uploading an apk to alpha will do. So you should add billing permission to your android manifest, build a signed version and load apk to alpha. Afterwards you can configure in app purchase products without uploading an apk to production.

Answer 2

I had the exact same problem. What I ended up doing was uploading a new release with the new permission but without the in app billing option visible. Mine was easy as it was just a preference option to remove ads that was easy to just not show. Once published the site let me create in-app products and I was able to test with a new apk file and published that one shortly afterwards.

Answer 3

You have to temporary change the package name and upload new application in market (Do not need to publish ) for temporary.

Just checking in App purchase so don't choose any package name which you want to use in feature. because Each package name is unique and Google remembers all package names anyway so you could use this a reminder

And then test in that and when you get success full run in that temporary build app then you can change again your previously package name in which you want to upload your next apk and you must have to delete your old version from that and then you can create in app product now.

Now if you want to check in App purchase then you have to buy that product from different account except this account in which you are uploading your apk Dont worry you can rollback your money after checking this functionality.

I recently face this problem and I followed like this So I hope you will get some help from my experience.