Free in-app product, non-consumable, on Google Play Console?

Question

For any successful consumable purchase, I want to remove the ads. Which at it's turn it must be a non-consumable so it can be restored.

ItunesConnect has a Free Tier, but Google Play Console doesn't. Is there any workaround for this?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The In-app Billing Version 3 service only supports managed in-app products or subscriptions. That means that all consumable and non consumable items are managed items.

If you uninstall the app, the purchase information still exists on the Google server linked with the user account and you can request for it when you reinstall the app.

Quoting the docs

When a user purchases a managed in-app item, Google Play stores the purchase information for each item on a per-user basis. This enables you to later query Google Play at any time to restore the state of the items a specific user has purchased. This information is persistent on the Google Play servers even if the user uninstalls the application or if they change devices.

You should not consume the purchase since removing an ad permanently after purchase means it was a non consumable in app product.

Non consumable products

Typically, you would not implement consumption for in-app products that can only be purchased once in your application and provide a permanent benefit. Once purchased, these items will be permanently associated to the user's Google account. An example of a non-consumable in-app product is a premium upgrade or a level pack.

So when you reinstall the app, query for purchases for the user and if a valid non consumable item purchase is found, hide your ads.