MIHAI IONESCU: Hello everyone.
My name is Mihai Ionescu.
PENG YING: And I'm Peng Ying.
MIHAI IONESCU: And welcome to another session of Google
Payments Live.
This is our first office hour since Google I/O, and we had
some very exciting announcements at Google I/O.
We'll do a recap of those, and of course we'll go over
questions posted on our moderator page.
So, Peng, what happened on Google I/O, and what kind of
announcements do you have there?
PENG YING: Cool.
We made some huge announcements at I/O. A few
things that we announced were the Save to Wallet API which
allows you to save offers your Wallet.
And we announced a few updates and new
features of In-App Payments.
So I'll cover a few during our session today, and then Mihai
is going to cover a few as well.
The new features and functionality are, we launched
subscriptions.
In addition to that, we announced
a new pricing structure.
So why don't you tell them what the pricing structure is.
MIHAI IONESCU: Sure.
So we got a lot of feedback from developers and merchants.
They were really happy with our 5% pricing structure, one
of the most aggressive in the industry.
But we also heard that for larger payments, they would
like to have a more flexible structure that
reflects larger amounts.
So we're very happy to announce that at Google I/O,
we introduced a pricing structure based on a 1.9% rate
plus a fixed amount and a 5% rate depending
on the payment amount.
So this will adjust automatically to give
developers the most favorable rate.
PENG YING: Yeah, it's great.
I mean it's great for a lot of developers who are actually
choosing larger order values.
So something like, for example, one of the partners
who was presenting with us, Kabam, they had an average
order size of something like $45.
And 5% isn't that great, but 1.9% and $0.30 is amazing.
So I think if you go out and you talk to credit card
processors, I think the lowest fee that they typically give
out is somewhere around 1.9% and $0.30.
MIHAI IONESCU: Yeah, so you can't get better than that.
And you'll notice that the threshold where we switch from
5% to the 1.9% rate is around $9 or so for US dollars.
It will be different in other currencies, so check which one
is best for you.
PENG YING: Not to mention that Google Wallet for digital
goods is a super easy API to implement.
So if you're thinking about monetizing a web app now or
sometime soon, be sure to take a look at the documentation.
We're actually going to go through some of the
subscriptions, changes, and JSON Web Token
documentation today.
And the link for the presentation that we gave at
I/O is bit.ly/gwdgslides.
That's Google Wallet for digital goods slides.
And do you just want to cover it now?
MIHAI IONESCU: Yeah, sure.
Let's go look at the slides--
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
PENG YING: Let's take a look at the slides, specifically
the slides about what changed before, how to add
subscriptions to your JSON Web Token.
MIHAI IONESCU: So let's switch to the slides.
PENG YING: Cool.
What you see on the screen right now is the JSON Web
Token that defines a subscription item.
If you're not familiar with JSON Web Tokens, it's
basically a method to encode some JSON and append a
signature to it.
Because of the way the API works, it's a JavaScript call
to initiate the purchase flow, all of your information passes
through the client side.
And in order to secure this information on the client
side, we pretty much append a signature or use a JSON Web
Token for our standard to append a signature to the data
to make sure that it hasn't been altered.
What you're seeing here is the item itself, an item that
defines a subscription item.
And the differences are highlighted in yellow.
So here, the type is a little bit different.
It's a Google Payments In-App subscription, and it's v1.
And then, within the item request itself, you're
defining the initial item, like it could be initial
purchase, something like prorated, or it could be a
free trial for a month, or anything else.
And then you're defining the recurrence.
Right now we only support monthly frequency, but in the
future, we hope to support a few more different time cycles
like biweekly, annually, weekly, daily.
So we'll give a lot of different options to the
developers.
Is there anything I'm missing Mihai?
MIHAI IONESCU: I think that covers it.
So, as you can see, it's very easy to implement
subscription.
Once you've implemented the single-item payment,
subscription is just a matter of adding a few lines to the
JWT and processing some extra callbacks.
Now why don't you talk a little bit about the
difference in callbacks for subscriptions.
PENG YING: Sure.
So there's one main difference in the callback, and this
occurs when a subscription is canceled.
So when a user decides to cancel a subscription within
their buyer center, you'll get a notification on your server
saying that we can no longer process the subscription.
And your server should then end their access to whatever
content that you were providing them.
So all this documentation can be found on
our Developer's Guide.
And the Developer's Guide can be found at developers.googl
e.com/in-app-payments.
Plural.
So yeah, take a look at it.
It's there if you're interested.
And it's really, really easy to integrate.
I mean, we can go through the slides and then speak a little
bit to the integration, but it's basically define the JSON
Web Token, call our JavaScript library, and that initiates a
purchase flow.
And there's some postback handling, but that's really
easy as well.
MIHAI IONESCU: Great, so, to recap what we did at I/O. A
new pricing structure based on feedback from developer.
For larger transactions with high order value, we now
charge 1.9% plus a fixed fee.
And for microtransactions, it's still 5%, and you will
get the most favorable rate automatically.
And of course, also based on developer feedback and
requests, we added subscription support, which
very simply and naturally can be integrated with your
existing integration.
Great.
PENG YING: And there's more coming, probably.
MIHAI IONESCU: And there is more coming, stay tuned.
PENG YING: Yeah, [INAUDIBLE].
MIHAI IONESCU: So you can start integrating
subscriptions right now.
They are available in the Sandbox.
Very soon, we plan to release them into production.
If you have any issues, we have a group where you can ask
questions or at our next office hours session, we can
go over any of those issues.
PENG YING: These are biweekly by the way, so we'll be
covering any questions that you have
about Google Payments.
MIHAI IONESCU: Great, so let's move on and
look at some questions.
So questions that we got from our moderator page.
PENG YING: We can also talk about Google developer
accounts, the other thing we released at Google I/O.
MIHAI IONESCU: So many new things to talk about.
So let's look at one more thing here.
So, also since I/O, we launched a new site for
developers, which is called Google Developer Academy.
So it's at developers.google.com/academy.
And if you go there, you'll find a lot tutorials and
courses covering all kinds of Google APIs.
And in particular for Google Wallet, we have a new course
called Google Wallet for digital goods, which gives you
a step-by-step tutorial on how to integrate the API with your
web application.
Very simple.
Go have a look just for simple steps.
And of course, we have a sample app that will guide you
through all these steps.
And in less than a day, you can be set up and start making
some money.
So developers.google.com/academy.
Right, so let's now take some questions.
PENG YING: Yeah, we're taking some questions from the--
what was it called again?
MIHAI IONESCU: On our moderator page, and maybe you
have some others from other sources.
So let's see.
Since we've been talking about subscriptions, we have a
couple about subscriptions, so let's address those.
So, for subscription, is monthly the
only supported frequency?
PENG YING: Well, right now, monthly is the
only supported frequency.
Like I said, we're looking to support
additional ones in the future.
It's only in sandbox right now, and I don't really know
the backend code that well, but I imagine is like similar
to setting up a separate job or some time schedule.
So it shouldn't be too difficult.
I guess we're trying to just get it out in the wild and
have developers start using it.
MIHAI IONESCU: We'd also like to hear some feedback on what
particular frequency would be more useful for developers.
Is it bimonthly, you want to charge weekly?
It would be great to know.
PENG YING: Yeah, and I think we'll also do something like
we will enable developers to have a separate API call to
initiate their recurrence requests.
So you could say, oh I want to make 12 recurrences, and then
you schedule it yourself.
MIHAI IONESCU: Great.
So also subscription related, when are you launching the new
subscription API into production?
When will that happen?
PENG YING: That's another question, but because it's
Google, unfortunately we can't share specific dates.
But we know that's coming very soon.
I hope you all are enjoying it.
I hope you all are playing around with it in Sandbox.
And the API won't change at all.
So, in order to change a production when production is
ready, all you have to do is change production config in
the loader, and you have to switch out your Seller ID and
Seller Secret when you're defining your JSON Web Tokens.
MIHAI IONESCU: So it may happen sooner than you think.
If you plan to have subscriptions get ready,
implementing the Sandbox, and then it'll be just a matter of
flicking a switch to enable it in production.
All right, so one more question related to
subscription.
There's another one.
Is Google Pay subscriptions a solution for software as a
service application subscriptions?
Sure.
PENG YING: Yeah, sounds like it should be fine.
MIHAI IONESCU: Sounds like a great fit.
It depends, again, based on the previous question, how
often do you want to charge the customer?
But it sounds like an excellent fit, and you can add
additional application and additional subscriptions as
you see fit.
So go play with it, and let us know how it works.
PENG YING: Yeah.
So Google Wallet for digital goods had been optimized for
digital goods.
I mean, if you're selling something like a service, you
can also use it.
It just depends on what additional information you
need to provide within the purchase experience that
sometimes Google Wallet for digital goods
may or may not support.
But I think in this case, where they're trying to sell
software as a service, that it should be completely fine.
MIHAI IONESCU: Great.
OK, so we covered the subscription questions.
Let's take one about currencies.
So, one developer says his merchant account is in euros,
but he would like to charge users in a different currency,
probably in another European country which does not use the
euro currency.
Is that possible?
So let's take an example.
Let's say you are in euros and you want to charge in British
pounds, so from euro to GBP.
Yes, it is possible, and you can find the available
currencies listed in our documentation.
You would just need to specify the new currency in the JWT
when you place the payment request.
What will happen, the user will be charged in that
particular currency, let's say British pounds.
And on his credit card statements, everything will be
in British pounds.
You, however, will receive the payout in your local currency,
which in this case is euros, and the transaction, the
exchange, will happen automatically at the best rate
of the day.
So you don't have to worry about any of those.
You just have to make sure you charge the user in the amount
you want in his local currency, and then you will
automatically get the funds in the currency of your account.
Everything happening transparently at the
best rate for you.
PENG YING: And we pull something like every hour,
every two hours, against the forex rate, so we typically
have pretty decent rates, pretty accurate rates.
MIHAI IONESCU: OK, let's get another one.
We have a couple of questions about adding other debit,
credit cards to the Google Wallet account.
I'm not sure if this is related to the Google Payments
API or just the in-store Wallet account.
PENG YING: So I think that one may be for adding additional
cards into the offline wallet, into NFC wallet.
That's what it sounds like.
That is another good question.
I mean, we're always trying to expand the availability and
usability of Wallet.
Right now, it's Citi MasterCards, but we are
looking to expand.
I would say to stay tuned for announcements in the future.
I mean, this is Google, we can't pre-announce anything.
I'd love to be like, yes.
But we'll see what comes down the road.
MIHAI IONESCU: Great.
And with Payments right now, users can use their credit
card or debit card for the online API.
PENG YING: Online Payments supports all credit cards, all
major networks.
It's just the offline NFC portion that is limited to
Citi Mastercards right now.
MIHAI IONESCU: And of course, we're looking to add new forms
of payment to both, including local forms of payment.
Good, so we covered that.
Let's see.
There's a question about using Google
Wallet on a rooted phone.
So I think that one has been also answered in the past.
We strongly recommend not to install or use Google Wallet
on a rooted phone.
The reason is, when you root the phone, you remove an extra
layer of security.
So of course, you can use it, but then you have to know
what's happening on your phone, and you'll be
responsible for any applications trying to steal
your PIN or do stuff like that.
So the short answer is, don't do it.
Use Google Wallet on a non-rooted phone
for your own security.
OK, we have anything else?
PENG YING: I don't know.
Are there any more questions?
MIHAI IONESCU: They're along the same lines about loyalty
cards to Google Wallet.
So as we said, we are looking into that
and plan to add those.
PENG YING: So right now, the loyalty card world is kind of
interesting.
There's a lot of different providers, a lot of different
proprietary systems.
So we're still investigating different possibilities of
loyalty cards for offline Wallet.
MIHAI IONESCU: Great.
I think this is it for this week, and we'll see you back
again in two weeks.
PENG YING: Yeah, so just a note, we'll be doing a couple
different formats.
And sometimes we'll invite some people from the risk team
here so they can answer questions about, what are
risky transactions, how do I minimize my risky
transactions?
Why are some of my orders canceled, and
so on and so forth.
In addition to that, we'll probably review some of the
applications that we find really good or that are
monetizing very well, and then invite them in to speak with
them about their experiences.
So, stay tuned.
We'll be on every two weeks, every other week.
Post any questions that you have.
Tell us what you want, and we will try to fill your needs.
MIHAI IONESCU: Great.
Bye.
PENG YING: Cool, see you.