Updates to Google Wallet for digital goods including attractive pricing and subscriptions support

Last week we had the pleasure of meeting many talented developers in the “Monetizing digital goods with Google Wallet” session and code lab at Google I/O. For those who weren’t able to attend, we have two updates to share about Google Wallet for digital goods (formerly called the In-App Payments API).

NEW PRICING
First, we’ve heard feedback from developers that 5% transaction fees are great for microtransactions but not as attractive for larger transactions with higher order value. To improve your experience selling higher priced items, we’re introducing 1.9% + $0.30 (or local equivalent) pricing in addition to the current 5%. Google will apply the option that charges you the lower of the two possible transaction fees for that order. Learn more and see examples of when each pricing option will apply in the Help Center.

SUBSCRIPTIONS
We also know that many orders happen on a recurring basis rather than just once. At Google I/O we demonstrated how to integrate with the new Google Wallet for digital goods subscriptions feature, which is now available in sandbox. Check out the video below.

If you’re already using Google Wallet for digital goods, just visit the sandbox to try subscriptions out for yourself and watch for an announcement in the coming weeks for when subscriptions will be ready for external use. If you’re not yet signed up, we encourage you to learn more and sign up for Google Wallet for digital goods on the developer site.


Posted by Pali Bhat, Product Manager, Google Wallet

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Visit Google In-App Payments at GDC

Last week we wrote about some recent updates to In-App Payments that help developers monetize their apps in fewer steps, across more countries. In addition to improvements in the in-app payment process, Google is also investing heavily in helping developers create and distribute their games.

For those of you attending GDC at the Moscone Center this week, stop by and see us at our developer days March 5th-6th in Room 2020 and at booth #1901 March 7th-9th on the show floor. If you’re not able to attend the show, check out our new site for game developers where you can learn about the Google tools, technology, and services that can help you build, distribute, promote, and monetize your games.

For even more game developer goodness, check out today’s post on the brand-new Google Developers Blog.

Posted by Arundhati Singh, Product Manager

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Making it even easier to monetize your games

(Cross-posted on the Google Developers Blog)

As any merchant knows, the easier the path to purchase, the more likely the sale. That’s why the In-App Payments team is dedicated to developing a simple, yet intuitive API that makes the in-app purchase experience effortless for your customers -- leading to a higher conversion rate for you. Over the last few weeks, we’ve made some improvements to the API that we wanted to share:

Additional Currencies Accepted
With the recent international expansion of In-App Payments, we’ve expanded the types of currencies accepted so you can sell your goods in your customer’s native currency. For example, if you’ve set up shop in the United Kingdom but your customer base is mostly in Japan, you can specify prices for your good in Japanese Yen and Google automatically handles currency conversion for you.

As of today, the supported currencies for In-App Payments are:



To use a different buyer currency, just specify the currency code in the JWT request:

   "request" => {
      "name" => "Piece of Cake",
      "description" => "Virtual chocolate cake to fill your virtual tummy",
      "price" => "1000",
      "currencyCode" => "JPY",
      "sellerData" => "user_id:1224245,offer_code:3098576987,affiliate:aksdfbovu9j"
   }





Card Details Minimized
In order to purchase through In-App Payments customers must first create a Google Wallet account, but entering payment information can be cumbersome. So, we’ve cut the amount of information that your customer has to enter when adding a new credit card to their Google Wallet. Now customers in many countries only need to specify their postal code instead of a full address, making the experience of creating or updating a Google Wallet quick and painless.

Terms of Service in Context
We’ve incorporated the Terms of Service into the purchase confirmation page to reduce the number of pages a new Google Wallet user sees before completing a purchase. This means that your new customers can easily review the Terms of Service and get to enjoying their purchases faster.







If you have any questions about Google In-App Payments, please reach out to us in the forum. We’ll also be hosting a regularly scheduled Google+ Hangout the first and third Thursday of every month at 9 a.m. PST to answer any technical questions about implementation of the API or about these new updates.

Stay tuned as we have plenty of new features to be released in 2012. Happy monetizing!

Posted by Peng Ying, Developer Advocate

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Let’s play some games!

I’m a huge gamer at heart. And because of this, I love working with Google In-App Payments and helping developers make money from their awesome games. Many of us will be spending the holidays at home enjoying family time and some rest and relaxation. What better way to rest and unwind than with some awesome games that you can play in the browser instantly? Below are some of my favorite games that showcase how developers are utilizing the web platform and creating immersive, monetizable games.




Bastion
Bastion is a story-driven action RPG with beautiful 2D visuals. You control ‘the kid’ (protagonist) with your keyboard and mouse, navigating him around the world to collect pieces and rebuild the bastion. The action is intense and rewarding, and the RPG elements addictive. If you haven’t already purchased the full game, check out the first area for free before buying the full game.

Cordy
Cordy is an adorable puzzle platformer. The goal is to complete a level as quickly as possible while collecting all of the items and enough energy to charge/unlock the exit. It’s gorgeous, fast-paced, and fun to play. Try it for free and you can upgrade to the full version in-game.









Fieldrunners
I’ve been addicted to Fieldrunners (and tower defense games in general) for years, and now it’s available in the browser. Personally, playing in the browser totally fixes my fat finger issues with tower placement. For those of you that have never tried tower defense games, the goal is to prevent enemies from reaching their goal by building a maze of towers that damage them.










GT Academy
Motorsports has always been one of my hobbies, and GT Academy is great because it’s a browser-based racing sim. You can progress through your career achieving better licenses and unlocking faster cars. Once you’ve honed your keyboard driving skills, challenge other players in online multiplayer.









Dragons of Atlantis
I honestly can’t define why this game is so addictive, but I keep going back over and over. Dragons of Atlantis is an empire game where you build your cities, develop your armies, establish alliances, and raid other empires. If you haven’t tried this game, run through the tutorial and you’ll be thoroughly hooked.









Angry Birds
It’s the classic Angry Birds that everyone loves, but with new holiday-themed levels to challenge you. Check out the latest HTML5 Angry Birds.








In addition to the games highlighted here, there are more great games to be found in Chrome Web Store and on Google+. After your holiday feast, have some fun and take a look at what you can now do within your browser.

Posted by Peng Ying, Developer Advocate

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Commerce API World Tour

Over the past few months, the Google Commerce Developer team has been very busy spreading the word about Google’s In-App Payments and Shopping APIs for Search and Content. In addition to meeting developers at events in the United States, we had the opportunity to engage with developer communities around the world.

We started our world tour in Japan at Google Developer Day, Tokyo. We continued globetrotting to Australia for GDD Sydney, then to Spain for Google DevFest, Barcelona and finished in Germany with events at the Berlin GTUG and GDD Berlin.

Peng Ying and Mihai Ionescu presented distribution and monetization strategies for web applications to developers in Tokyo, Sydney and Berlin while Danny Hermes spoke about using the Google Shopping APIs in Barcelona.

We love meeting and talking to developers, and we’re looking forward to continuing to connect with developer communities worldwide. With the recent international expansion of In-App Payments, we’ll be hosting a hangout on Google+ tomorrow December 20th at 11AM PST to answer monetization questions.

For future events, keep an eye on this blog, our social media channels and the Google Developers events page, or join a Google Technology User Group.

Posted by Mihai Ionescu, Commerce Developer Advocate

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In-App Payments Expands its Borders

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Code and Chromium Blogs)

Since Google In-App Payments launched in July for developers in the United States, we’ve received great feedback on how easy it is to integrate as well as how simple it is for consumers to use. While the API has been off to a strong start, there’s been a growing demand for availability outside of the United States.

So starting today, we are opening developer enrollment for Google In-App Payments to 17 additional countries. In addition to the United States, developers from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom can now use the Google In-App Payments API to incorporate an in-context payment experience into applications on the Chrome Web Store and their own sites.

Developers using In-App Payments are seeing strong conversions and revenue streams thanks to these key features:

• Ease of use: the short payment process for consumers takes place right in the developer’s app or site.
• Large existing user base: there are millions of Google Wallet online users in over 140 countries.
• Low fees: developers pay just 5% on all transactions.

You can get started accepting payments in your web apps by following the tutorial and get answers to any questions in the forum. We look forward to expanding to even more countries in the future, as well as continuously working to improve the Google In-App Payments experience.

Posted by Pali Bhat, Group Product Manager

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Upcoming Developer Events

Online commerce continues to see explosive growth rates around the world. At the same time, new technologies make the online shopping experience easier for both merchants and shoppers. Over the next month, the Google Commerce Developer Relations team will be travelling to Japan, Australia, Spain and Germany to meet with developers and talk about the latest developments in online commerce.

We'll cover various topics from monetizing web apps and games with Google In-App Payments and AdSense Media Ads, to using the Google Shopping APIs (Search and Content) to build innovative applications. If you haven’t registered yet, here is the complete list of locations and dates:

• Google Developer Day, Tokyo - November 1, 2011
• Google Developer Day, Sydney - November 8, 2011
• Google DevFest, Barcelona - November 8, 2011
• Google Developer Day, Berlin - November 19, 2011

We’re looking forward to talking to you at one of the developer events.

Posted by Mihai Ionescu, Commerce Developer Advocate

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Monetizing Games with In-App Payments

(Cross-posted on the Google Code Blog)

Kabam was part of the initial launch of Google+ Games with two game titles, Dragons of Atlantis and Edgeworld, and we recently added Global Warfare. For these games, we integrated Google In-App Payments and we’re pleased with our games’ monetization to date. There are a couple things we learned along the way that we’re happy to share with the community.

Integrating In-App Payments

Integrating In-App Payments in our games was very simple, especially when compared to other payment platforms. There is excellent documentation available, complete with examples for each step of the purchase flow. We also used open source libraries such as ruby-jwt to generate the tokens required for each purchase option.

We designed our games and purchase pages around the expectation of instant feedback, making sure to incorporate page loads or refreshes wherever possible. For example, in Edgeworld, a player attacking an enemy base can load the list of Platinum options instantly, without waiting for the list of payment options to load. After their Platinum purchase, the player is immediately brought back to the game, with their new currency and items waiting for them.

Pro Tip: Strive to Reduce Purchaser Friction

One of the keys to maximizing revenue is to remove as much friction as possible from the purchase flow, making sure as many people as possible get from one step of the flow to the next. Many payment platforms send players to their own website and multi-page checkout flow. The Google In-App Payments approach allows us to keep players on our game page for the entire flow, making sure we can manage more of the process and reduce abandonment.

Additionally, the player's credit card information is stored securely, so once a player has made a purchase anywhere using In-App Payments, their information is available for future purchases without additional data entry. Finally, JavaScript callbacks provided by In-App Payments allow us to show the effects of the purchase immediately, improving customer satisfaction.

General Recommendations

For those experienced in this space, the following may seem rudimentary. At the same time, I’d be remiss not to include these recommendations as they are important to developing a successful game payments system:

• Make sure your payment flow is as seamless as possible, never giving the player the opportunity to get bored waiting for something to load. 
• Record and monitor each step of the payment flow in order to identify potential problems. 
• Run A/B tests on your purchase option page to optimize the number of players who make a purchase, as well as the amount of the average purchase. 

We are proud to be among the first companies on Google’s exciting new monetization platform, and we look forward to the continuing growth in features, functionality and developer tools.

Posted by Beau Harrington, Senior Development Director, Kabam

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Google @ GDC Online Oct 10-12th

(Cross-posted on the Google Code Blog)



This year at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) Online we have organized a Developer Day on Oct. 10th full of Google information for game developers. It will feature hardcore technical information on Google products and platforms delivered by Google engineers and developer advocates. We’ll discuss the latest projects we’re working on and how our online technologies can help you better create, distribute, and monetize games that reach a larger audience than ever before. We’ll present everything from how developers can build hardware accelerated 3D games for the browser with WebGL to the game framework used to bring Angry Birds to the Web.



In addition to the Developer Day, we will also have a booth on the Expo floor on Oct. 11th-12th where we’ll have representatives from the Chrome Web Store, Native Client, WebGL, App Engine, Google+, In-App Payments, Google TV, and AdSense/AdMob demoing technologies and platforms for game developers. Come by booth 503 to try out Google products and ask questions, or hang out in our Google TV lounge.



For more information on our presence at GDC Online, including session and speaker details, please visit http://www.google.com/events/gdc/2011. Hope to see you in Austin!



Not able to attend GDC? Check out Google Game Developer Central to get an overview of Google products and services that are particularly relevant to game developers.



Posted by Amy Walgenbach, Developer Marketing

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Tune in tomorrow: HTML5 hackathon

If you wanted to attend the HTML5 Web App hackathons happening around the United States over the past few weeks but have been unable to do so, we have some good news for you. We'll be live streaming the Mountain View hackathon presentation through the Google Technology User Group (GTUG) YouTube channel.



During the presentation we'll cover the end to end process of using HTML5 to create rich, native-feeling web apps, distributing the apps through Chrome Web Store, and monetizing with In-App Payments.



Tune in tomorrow, August 11th, at 12:15 PM PST to view the presentation.



See you then!



Posted by Peng Ying, Developer Programs Engineer

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Make Money with In-App Payments for the Web

At the Google I/O conference back in May, Vikas Gupta introduced a preview of the Google In-App Payments API during the Chrome keynote speech. Google In-App Payments purchases were demonstrated as a simple click right within a web app, so buyers could enjoy a developer’s content, without interruption.

Today, we’re making Google In-App Payments available for all web application developers to integrate with their web apps wherever they’re hosted, including the Chrome Web Store. Integration is simple with just a few lines of code. And pricing is set at just 5-percent.



In-App Payments is initially available for developers with a United States bank account and for buyers in more than 140 countries. We look forward to expanding to additional developer locations as quickly as possible.

Posted by Amit Fulay, Product Manager

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From acquisition to in-app payments in less than one year

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)

This is the latest post in the Official Google Blog series profiling entrepreneurial Googlers working on products across the company and around the world. In this post, you’ll read why one team decided to sell their company to Google, and how they went from acquisition to product launch in less than a year. - Ed.

The decision to sell your company is one of the hardest an entrepreneur can make, and as the CEO of Jambool, I thought long and hard about Google’s offer to acquire us when they came calling in August 2010. Ultimately, we decided to join Google for two reasons: one, we shared the goal of offering consumers and merchants unified online payment solutions, and two, we realized that Google was serious about helping us integrate our technology into their digital tools by providing us with infrastructure and other support. Less than a year later, we’ve already taken a major step to help Google deliver on this vision with Google In-App Payments, which we announced last month at Google I/O. In-App Payments enable web application developers to receive payments for digital and virtual goods without the user ever leaving the application.

Me on stage at Google I/O introducing Google In-App Payments

When we first joined, we expected to spend a lot of time ramping up, meeting people and learning Google’s technology. In reality, our shared vision for the product enabled us to quickly partner with teams across the company to build out our product at scale. As a startup, you spend the majority of your time building teams from scratch to focus on functions like product, sales, marketing, operations and legal. At Jambool, I’d divide my time across operations, raising funds and meeting with outside developers. But at Google, we were able to combine our efforts with teams already in place who could manage those areas while we focused on the core product.

We set an ambitious goal of launching in-app payments nine months later at Google I/O, which motivated us to work quickly. We worked with Google’s established teams—especially Chrome, Android and Google Checkout—to build a simple API and intuitive user interface. During the last few weeks before Google I/O—when we were still working around the clock just to finish the product—we were invited to announce our launch as part of the day two keynote. That gave us even more drive to finish on time. And, thanks to the Chrome team, we found partners like Angry Birds and Graphic.ly, which really demonstrated the product’s usefulness and got developers excited about our broader vision of seamless digital payments.

As a startup, we never imagined we’d stand on a stage like the one at I/O and instantly reach consumers, businesses and developers around the world. In the first 24 hours after the announcement, thousands of developers signed up to use the API. This is something we wouldn’t have been able to do so quickly on our own, and it’s a testament to the big things a startup can accomplish by joining Google. We’re already looking forward to what the next year brings as developers around the world start to build great businesses on our platform.

If you’re interested in integrating your apps into Google’s In-App Payments API, we invite you to sign up and send us feedback.

Posted by Vikas Gupta, Head of Consumer Payments

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Google I/O Commerce Recap

With Google I/O 2011 still fresh in our minds, we want to thank everyone who joined us for the Commerce track sessions at the Moscone Center in San Francisco or watched the sessions online from around the world.

This was the first time that Google I/O had an entire track devoted to Commerce and we are very pleased by the enthusiastic response from the developer community. The presentations covered a wide range of monetization topics and e-commerce tools from Google Checkout and a developer preview of In-App Payments for the web to Shopping APIs for content and search, eBooks and solutions for publishers who choose to charge.

All the sessions were recorded and are now available to watch on YouTube. If you weren't able to attend I/O, missed one of these great sessions or want to review a session again, please follow the links below for videos and session content:

• Google Checkout: A Foundation For Payments
• Introducing In-App Payments for the Web
• Introduction to Google Shopping APIs
• Google One Pass: A simple, flexible, Web API for Publishers
• Integrating to eBooks: APIs to Sell and Read eBooks for Affiliates, Retailers and Device Makers

And of course, we have also had several exciting new Google Commerce product announcements since I/O:

• Google Offers beta
• Google Wallet
• Developer API of Google In-App Payments for the web
• Google Books API now in Code Labs

We’re just getting started with many of these Commerce developer products, so stay tuned and keep following us @GoogCommerceDev for more news and announcements.

Posted by Mihai Ionescu, Commerce Developer Advocate

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