Hi. My name is Mrinalini Loew, Group Product Manager at Google Play.
Today, I'll be talking about what's new in Google Play Commerce.
Our mission in Play Commerce is to offer the smartest way
to monetize digital experiences on a global scale.
Whether you monetize through paid apps,
in-app purchases, Play Pass, or subscriptions,
we are your business partner.
To help you, we focus a lot on building a trustworthy ecosystem,
partnering with you to grow your business,
helping you retain your users,
and supporting a great developer experience
through a modern platform.
We're excited to tell you all about what's new
in each of these areas.
Trust continues to be a big focus area at Google.
And here at Play, it is no exception.
We believe it is critical to have an ecosystem
where users trust developers and developers trust users.
And that's why we've continued investing
in product and policy changes to create a safer ecosystem for all.
For example, to better help developers trust users,
we offer several anti-fraud APIs to help safeguard your businesses
from potential fraud and abuse.
Developers who have implemented account ID with these APIs
in the Play Billing Library
have seen up to a 30% decrease in fraud attempts
and as much as a 50% reduction in chargeback losses.
We mentioned that trust is a two-way street.
That means we also need to create an environment
where our users can trust developers,
particularly in ongoing commerce relationships,
like subscriptions.
Let me start by sharing our core principles
around a trusted experience for subscriptions.
First, transparency above all.
Users must know what they are subscribing to
and what the terms are,
including clarity around free trials, intro pricing, and auto-renewals.
Next, users should feel safe trying out your content.
This means that users shouldn't worry about free trials
or introductory prices lapsing without their knowledge.
Finally, we want to ensure that if a user no longer wants
to continue with their paid subscription,
it should be easy for them to cancel.
You've likely seen these principles demonstrated in several updates
we've made over the last few years,
like the Play Subscription Center,
where users can easily view and manage any subscription
started via Play Billing.
Most recently, we made several platform-level product changes
to build user trust that require no work from you at all.
To increase transparency around subscription terms,
we've made improvements to the check-out cart
to add further distinction between trial periods
and regular pricing.
To ensure users feel safe trying a subscription,
we've added a set of email reminders
before a free trial or introductory price ends.
We also send a notification when an app
with an active subscription is uninstalled.
The notification reminds the user
that they can manage or cancel the subscription
in the Play Subscription Center.
We believe that by increasing user trust around subscriptions,
you will benefit from an increase in higher quality subscribers
and lower refund and chargeback rates.
To ensure users understand free offers and how they are getting billed,
we updated our developer policies in April of 2020
to require transparency around how offers are communicated
within apps,
to ensure every user evaluating your service
has an informed choice.
You can learn more through the link displayed here.
We never want users or developers
to worry about whether it's safe to transact on a Play app,
which is why a trustworthy ecosystem is our top priority.
Once that's established, we want to help you grow.
Play Commerce continues to invest
in helping you grow your business
by 1) increasing your access to customers around the world;
2) giving you the tools to help optimize your go-to-market efforts;
and 3) continuing to expand your choices
around how you can monetize on Play.
Let me speak to each one of these areas.
Access means having users ready and able to pay for your apps.
Play users now have access to over 290 local payment methods
in more than 70 countries,
and access to international cards
in more than 150 countries around the world.
We're particularly excited to see the impact
of our ongoing efforts to add important regional payment methods,
such as UPI in India, GoPay in Indonesia,
and TrueMoney in Thailand.
Last year, we announced the support of cash transactions
in Billing Library version 2 and above
via our pending transactions feature.
Today, I'm happy to say that users can easily pay with cash
in Japan, Mexico, Indonesia, and Malaysia
at over 50,000 locations, including at leading retailers,
such as 7-Eleven, OXO, and FamilyMart.
General availability for supporting cash in-app purchases
will be available shortly.
Once implemented, we'll also be prepared
to support future payment methods, like bank transfer.
With access to all these users,
we know you're eager to implement a marketing strategy
that makes sense for you and your business.
Based on the success some of you have had
with our promotional capabilities available
for one-time purchases and paid apps,
we have now extended two of these capabilities to subscriptions,
hoping that they can optimize your go-to-market efforts.
First, you can now create custom multi-use promotion codes
in the Google Play console
to provide an extended free trial to your subscription.
Second, last year, we launched a new and improved redemption flow
for subscription one-time promotion codes.
Now, you can provide a deep link for users
to directly redeem a promo code and subscribe in one flow,
with the option to install the app afterwards.
Note that this feature requires
Billing Library version 2 and above.
This new flow was recently used by VSCO,
in partnership with the Chromebook team,
to launch a one-year free trial to all Chromebook users.
Remember, with Billing Library version 2 and above,
it's important to implement the purchase ACK API
in order to finalize subscriptions started out of your app.
In-app purchases and subscriptions
are popular monetization methods.
But we continue to expand your choice
in how you can monetize on Play.
This past fall, in the US, we launched Google Play Pass,
a new subscription service
where users get access to hundreds of great apps and games
completely free of ads and in-app purchases,
as another monetization choice to augment your current strategy.
We're happy to announce that since launch,
more than 500 apps and games are delighting users
and monetizing via Play Pass,
and that we've more than doubled Play US revenue
for the participating titles in aggregate.
Play Pass is currently an invitation-only program,
though we are always looking for awesome new content,
and you can express interest in joining.
You can learn more by visiting the link displayed here.
Play Commerce is not just invested
in helping you acquire new users.
We also want to help you retain a strong and engaged user base.
Subscriptions continue to grow in popularity
with both consumers and developers.
We're hearing that as you're focusing on creating new users
with a sustainable, engaging product,
you're looking for some guidance
on how best to address longer-term retention.
As a reminder, our subscriptions platform
offers many features for developers to reduce all types of churn.
We address involuntary churn,
where users churn due to failed payment methods,
through features like account hold and grace period,
both of which give us more time to retry a failed payment method
after the renewal date.
We also address voluntary churn
by giving users the option to pause instead of cancel.
These features have helped many of you
improve your retention and grow your businesses.
For example, did you know that developers with account hold enabled
have 8% lower involuntary churn
and 35% higher payment decline recovery rates
compared to developers without account hold?
We know these features work,
but we know you also have a million other things to think about.
So we are updating our default settings
so you can more easily take advantage of these features.
Starting on November 1st of this year,
account hold and restore will be required
and pause will be set on as default.
To ensure your app is ready to handle these new changes,
we will soon be enabling account hold and pause
for all license testers
so that you can test your integrations well before the deadline.
We've also added a host of exciting new features
that you can take advantage of
to help increase your subscription retention rates.
In the Google Play Console,
you can now add a short list of benefits
that users get from your subscription.
We will then show these benefits to users in the cancel flow
as a way to remind them of the value your subscription provides,
so they can make an informed decision
about whether to keep your subscription or cancel.
We will also be enabling a new feature
in the Google Play subscription center
where users can easily resubscribe from their expired subscriptions.
Starting in June, you will be able to opt in to this feature
for your selected SKUs in the Google Play Console.
In November, if you have not explicitly opted in
or out of this feature,
we will automatically opt in all your SKUs.
Since this subscription is started outside of your app,
it is only available to developers
who are using Billing Library version 2 or above
and have correctly implemented the required purchase ACK API.
Finally, we've heard your feedback that requiring users to opt in
to subscription price decreases was too restrictive.
We're happy to announce that starting today,
subscription price decreases will no longer require users
to take action to opt in.
Instead, users will be notified that the price is decreasing
with the option to cancel instead.
Often, the first step to increasing user retention
starts with increasing user engagement.
In 2018, we successfully launched the Google Play Points program
designed to show appreciation to our members
and help increase engagement with your games and apps.
It's free to join, and members earn points for everything they buy on Google Play.
They can exchange points for rare and exclusive content
in top games.
Play Points is now available in the United States, Japan,
Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, with plans to expand further.
Finally, we are committed to keeping our platform modern,
always trying to balance creating ecosystem trust,
offering new monetization features,
and managing ease of implementation.
Billing Library is how we do this.
It's how your Android app provides
in-app purchases and subscriptions,
and replaces the deprecated AIDL integration method.
It's designed to make it easier for you
to deliver great purchase experiences to users
without needing to copy or update a bunch of reference code.
And it helps ensure best practices and correct API usage.
Today, we're launching version 3 of the Billing Library.
This newest release includes
the new subscription promotion capabilities
I spoke about earlier,
and the ability to attribute purchases
to a specific in-game character.
It's available today in Kotlin and Java flavors,
as well as a newly available plugin for Unity.
Upgrading from version 2 to version 3 is easy.
Simply update your build file to point to the new version
and make sure to read the release notes
to adapt to any necessary changes.
I wanted to touch a bit more on purchase attribution,
which I mentioned before.
Many games and apps need to ensure
in-app purchases are attributed to a specific in-game character,
avatar, or user profile.
Billing Library now allows you to specify this information
when launching the purchase flow.
Let's examine the code to see this in action.
First, we obtain a new
Next, we set an
to uniquely identify the user's account.
Optionally, we can set an
to uniquely identify the character profile.
And finally, we pass these parameters into the billing flow.
This leverages the same account ID fraud solution mentioned earlier
and avoids the need to build a custom solution
based on the deprecated developer plate payload.
After the purchase completes, you can retrieve the account ID
and correctly attribute the purchase.
Meeting the future needs of both Android users and developers
requires changes to how we improve Google Play's billing system.
So last May, at Google I/O,
we announced some changes on how we do this,
including a two-year support window
for each major version update of the Billing Library.
We've heard that for many developers,
a deterministic release schedule like this
would help in planning their engineering efforts.
This also helps all users benefit from a modern buying experience,
including new payment options, updated user experiences,
and performance and security improvements.
The two-year support window means support for AIDL,
and Billing Library versions 1 and 2 will end in 2021.
We're now aligning with Play's target SDK requirement deadlines.
This provides additional time
than previously announced May 2021 deadline.
Starting August 2nd, 2021,
all new apps must use Billing Library version 3 and above.
Starting November 1st, 2021, all app updates
must use Billing Library version 3 and above.
Apps using older versions that are already in the store
will continue to process transactions,
but app updates will require Billing Library version 3 or above
after the November 1st, 2021 deadline.
Based on your feedback,
we've also worked on better support materials
to help developers,
including updated documentation and sample apps.
If you're still using the deprecated AIDL integration method,
we've created a migration guide to help you get started.
There's also a video walkthrough
of migration from AIDL to Billing Library.
These are all available on
Let's recap everything we've talked about today.
We've talked about platform and policy updates
aimed to increase ecosystem trust,
and some new features available to help grow businesses
and sustain an engaged user base.
We've also talked about some upcoming integration requirements
and default opt-ins,
including subscription retention features and updated deadlines for Billing Library,
with new apps requiring version 3 or above
starting August 2nd, 2021,
and app updates requiring version 3 or above
starting November 1st, 2021.
Finally, to help you with these integration requirements,
we have completely revamped our documentation,
sample apps, and best practices,
which you can access through the link shared here.
For subscription developers,
we will soon enable account hold for all license testers,
so you can ensure your compliance ahead of deadlines.
We hope you're as excited as we are
about what's new in Google Play Commerce.
Thanks for watching!