Unable to Test Google Play Slow Card Payments

We have been receiving issues with customers who have been making purchases on GooglePlay. Having investigated this we believe that this is an issue with how we are handling pending payments for cards that take time to process. With the release of the Google Billing 2 api, there is now support for testing these slow cards but we have been unable to get this to work with the Unity IAP plugin as the "Slow Test Card" option does not appear when attempting to make a purchase. We created a test Android Studio app to prove that we had everything set up correctly on the GooglePlay side and the option showed up correctly there so we believe that this is an issue with Unity IAP.

We have updated Unity IAP to the latest version (1.23 as of writing) but can still not see the "Slow Test Card" option when testing a purchase. Does the Unity IAP plugin not use the latest Google Billing 2 api?

Any help or assistance would be greatly appreciated as this is affecting real customers and we would like to resolve this ASAP but are unable to actually test the issue at present.

Thanks,
Tom

 

Yeah, we're the same. We only get two options when testing purchases via Google Play. Neither of them are the slow test card. We've had reports of users not getting their purchases and am now thinking it might be the same thing.

I see a number of purchases in the Google Play Console that sit in a "Pending purchase" state for minutes before changing to "Chargeable".

 

We are just a pass through for the respective stores, we do not introduce any additional processing or delays. But we believe we have identified a separate issue with users receiving PurchaseFailed but still being charged, this should be fixed in the next release hopefully in a few weeks.

 

Hi Jeff,

I appreciate that the Unity IAP plugin is a wrapper around the various stores but is there any documentation on the versions of those store APIs in Unity IAP 1.23 or the new version that will come out? One of the theories that we have for why the Test Card might not be showing when making a test purchase is that the Unity IAP plugin could be using a version of the Google Billing API that is older than v2, but we haven't seen any documentation that can tell us what version is included. We can see a google billing aar inside the Plugins folder but are unable to verify the version of this.

The other theory that we have is that, as per the Android Docs, enablePendingPurchases needs to be set to enable pending purchase functionality. On our AndroidStudio demo we have set this via the BillingClient.Builder class but there does not seem to be an equivalent in Unity's ConfigurationBuilder, or any similar looking functionality in the IGooglePlayConfiguration interface. Does Unity enable this functionality by default or provide some way to enable us to configure that to be enabled?

Cheers

 

@TJClifton_StickSports Sorry, I don't quite follow. Do you mean the test card that testers are presented with so they aren't actually charged, or a feature that allows/enforces a slow response in the purchase transaction? Test cards work just fine, you need to make sure you browse to the Opt-In test URL from a browser on the actual device, it will prompt you (on each device) to join the test program. It will confirm that you are now a tester, and will prompt you to download from Google Play. These steps are important, you can't simply just install the game directly on your phone via USB, you need to opt-in first. Subsequently a test card pop-up will be presented on each purchase. You configure your list of testers on the Google Play Developer Dashboard. Can you show a screenshot of the option that provides slow response times?

 

@JeffDUnity3D I'm not talking about standard Test Cards, those work fine. We have had those implemented for months and they work as you would expect.

As I said, I am talking about what Google refers to as a "Slow Test Card". So as an illustration, in a demo project made with Android Studio that uses the Google Billing API v2, you can see that when we make a purchase we see 4 total options - the 2 normal test card accept/declines and 2 more accept/decline options for Slow Test Card.

The options we expect to see:


However with the latest version of the Unity IAP plugin (we upgraded to 1.23.1 today but that hasn't resolved the issue) when we test the product we see only the standard 2 options as shown below.

The options shown when using Unity IAP:


As I mentioned before, we believe that this could be caused by Unity using a version of Google Billing that is older than v2 when this functionality was introduced. But Version 2 was introduced in May 2019 so if this is the case I'd be surprised and disappointed that the Unity IAP is using such an old version of Google Billing.

Can you confirm the version that is used by Unity IAP as I can't find anywhere in the Untiy release notes what version the Unity IAP is using. If Unity is using v2 of Google Billing are there other steps that are required to enable this option? As you can see from the attached options with the same options set on GooglePlay we see the Slow Test Card option in a demo with GoogleBilling v2 but not with Unity IAP 1.23.1 so it looks to me like an issue/lacking feature on Unity's side.

Without these options it is impossible to test purchases that end up in a pending state that are made with slow credit cards and this issue is affecting a large number of our users. Without being able to test this with the options Google provides it is impossible for us to test this issue and resolve it.

Thanks,
Tom

 

Got it. The issue that you are seeing is not with slow credit cards. It's with the IAP plugin not properly consuming the purchase in some situations. A PurchaseFailed is received but the user is still charged. Please test with 1.23.1 which was just released. We are working directly with Google to implement their newest billing API, and should be included in an upcoming release.

 

it's been a few months and I still ca't seem to make it work. Is it ever going to work properly?

 

Sorry, make what work properly? You mean the Slow Credit option? I would not expect it to at this point.

 

Is there any news on this problem. Currently, there's exist this https://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/unity. But the problem is documentation is like S***, Subscription Manager is deprecated, but they dont mention about any substitute and how can i determine the state of subscription?? like in this link https://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/subs

 

What problem are you referring to? This thread is about testing with the slow credit card feature from Google

 

yes i have a question about slow credit card

 

You mentioned subscriptions and the Google slow credit card feature is not related to subscriptions. The slow credit card feature should be available iwhen we move to the updated Google billing library, hopefully later this year. Separately, there is information on subscription handling here https://forum.unity.com/threads/improved-support-for-subscription-products.532811/

 

ok thank you, can you let us know when will you update Google billing?? thank in advance

 

Slow credit card testing feature is supported and working now. The latest IAP 2.2.5 includes the Google v3 Billing library. We don't seem to receive the failed callback from Google however, only the ProcessPurchase after a few minutes.

 

Has this been fixed? We still see the same issue occur in 3.1.0 where the "Slow Test Card, declines after a few minutes" option doesn't trigger any of the IStoreListener methods.

 

Yes, that is correct. We all see that same behavior, looks to be a Google issue.

 

Is there a way to identify Pending status for "Slow Test Card, declines after a few minutes" option and show a proper message to the user to wait confirmation?

It seems that I should decide myself if a purchase is Pending or Complete returning one of these values in my IStoreListener.ProcessPurchase implementation, but I need reliable data from the Store to backup this decision and this data doesn't seem to be available through Unity IAP.

What I want to achieve is this:

1. User buys a non-consumable item with "Slow Test Card, declines after a few minutes" option;
2. The app shows a message saying the purchase is pending (based on reliable data from purchasing process);
3. The app can check the purchase status of the item at any time to change its Buy Button label to show "Pending" while the purchase isn't cancelled yet and "Buy" again when it finally gets cancelled.

Steps 2 and 3 don't seem to be possible using Unity IAP. I tried to use the receipt payload data returned for Google Play, but the fields don't seem to be reliable either.

The value for Payload.json.purchaseState is UNSPECIFIED_STATE for successfully purchased items instead of PURCHASED. When using the "Slow Test Card, declines after a few minutes" option, the value for Payload.json.purchaseState is 4, which isn't even a possible value in Google's documentation.

@JeffDUnity3D This seems be an issue, if I not missing something. How can I handle this Pending -> Cancelled scenario and properly inform the user about what it's happening (and avoid making the user angry due to the lack of feedback)?

 

You'll want to use the Deferred Listener as demonstrated in the Sample IAP Project v2. purchaseState = 4 is a deferred purchase and you'll want to return Pending until the user finally pays (purchaseState = 1). Deferred purchase support is required by Google. Here is the Sample IAP Project https://forum.unity.com/threads/sample-iap-project.529555/#post-6950270

 

Thanks for the reply, Jeff. But it seems there's actually an issue here.

The current flow of my app is this:
1. User buys a non-consumable product with Slow Test Card, declines after a few minutes option;
2. The Google Play UI immediately shows that the purchase was successful (although it's pending) and the IStoreListener.ProcessPurchase is not triggered at this point;
3. The app somehow needs to say to the user that the purchase is pending before IStoreListener.ProcessPurchase gets triggered, but that's not possible at this point.

After Step 1, a receipt is set for the pending product in IStoreController.products, I should be able to use that in Step 3 to verify the purchase status and show it to the user, but the purchaseState for that receipt is incorrect.

When I buy a product with the Test card, always approves option, purchaseState for that product is set to 0 (not 1, as expected according to Google's documentation). When I buy a product with the Slow Test Card, declines after a few minutes option, purchaseState for that product is also set to 0 in IStoreController.products. So I can't tell if a product is Pending or Purchased because Unity IAP wrongly set the same state for different situations (and purchaseState 0 isn't PENDING or PURCHASED according to Google, it's UNSPECIFIED_STATE (!) ). I never get purchaseState != 0 in IStoreListener.ProcessPurchase at any point.

I only get purchaseState = 4 in purchaseEvent when IStoreListener.ProcessPurchase finally gets triggered after using the Slow Test Card, declines after a few minutes option to buy the product. I think using the Deferred Listener, as you suggested, won't solve the problem of the purchaseState being incorrect in IStoreController.products until the purchase is actually processed.

This is an issue, Unity IAP should provide correct purchaseState in accordance to Google's documentation. Should I submit a bug report?

 

No, just use the Sample Project as an example. You need to implement the deferred listener. Also, as has been mentioned, slow card with decline is not working, you would want to contact Google. We plan to expose purchaseState as a receipt property in a future release. In the meantime, you'll need to parse the receipt yourself and look for purchaseState = 4 (deferred purchase). Google also needs to update their documentation.

 

Please, update Unity IAP's docs to clearly inform that these slow payment options are not supported yet. Additionally, please also inform in the docs that purchaseState for IStoreController.products should not be trusted. If this is a Google issue, I think you guys from Unity should contact them. If I need to handle myself critical issues like this one for the standard Android app store, so what is the point of using Unity IAP?

Also, I've implemented the Deferred Listener and it gets immediately triggered after using the Slow Test Card, declines after a few minutes with purchaseStatus = 4. With that, I should be able to keep my own local list of pending purchases and clear each one after IStoreListener.ProcessPurchase gets triggered with a different status. But IStoreListener.ProcessPurchase never gets triggered in release builds for this case, it is only triggered while debugging a development build. This is very inconsistent. Also, the purchaseStatus = 4 in Deferred Listener won't help if I can't check it against a different (and reliable) purchaseState later.

I'll ignore the handling of pending purchases for now as I don't see a solution for this scenario. But this is critical and should be fixed ASAP because it can impact my revenue and also result in poor app performance and bad reviews in stores.

 

We would not update the docs to reflect a bug! You are reading the docs related to it. As mentioned, Slow Card with Decline is NOT working. You are free to submit a bug to Google. But it may be expected behavior. If the user doesn't pay, their pending purchase is cancelled in 3 days. We can only track the successful case because a transaction is generated.

 

It's common practice to have a Known Issues section in documentation. The issues discussed here should be present in Unity IAP's package docs because everyone using Unity IAP will look to those docs as the main source of info. I used the package docs, which is outdated if you look at the image at the end of the page and it doesn't even mention the slow payment options while testing. This thread started by a user having trouble in 2019 is not an easy place to find out about known issues if you just trying to implement Unity IAP for the first time following the docs. That was my experience.

Anyway, thank you for answering my questions.

 

Olá, estou começando com IAP agora. Estou vendo a moeda do jogo no back-end. Tudo funcionando muito bem, quando o aplicativo recebe um pagamento de sucesso, ele envia um pacote para o back-end e termina e inclui o crédito.

I'm testing if one user close the game after buying with a slow credit card. If back in a short time (few minutes) it works perfectly, play store send the ok, and client send this ok to server. But if the user close the game with a slow card and take 1 hour or more, the "sucess" message from google don't come. Anyway to solve this? Or keep it in know problems?

 

That is the expected behavior from Google, we have no control over it.