Testing of billing in the application: "Publisher can not purchase this product"

Question

My app seems ready to get a “real life” test for the in-app purchase procedure on my device. However, I get the error "Publisher cannot buy this item" on the Play Store. Now, how should I check this out? I do not want to lose the configuration of the phone by reinstalling it with a dummy account for testing purposes only. In the developer’s console, in the Settings - License Verification section, I added my email address in the GMail Accounts with Test Access section, but that doesn’t change anything ... maybe I skipped some simple way, but Feeling very confused right now!

Answer 1

A developer cannot buy anything from himself. To fully test, you need to create a test account in the developer console, and then install the application on the device where it is the main account. There is no other way. See http://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/billing_testing.html

Answer 2

Here is an attempt to put all the requirements in one answer. This is the easiest process that worked for me:

• Create a new Gmail account or use an existing Gmail account that is not a developer account.
• List the email address of the test account in the Google Play Developer Console under Settings> Account Information> License Testing.
• On your device, go to Settings> Accounts, select your developer account, tap the menu with three dots, then select “Delete” to delete the account from the device. You can add it later.
• Create a signed release option for your application.
• Download the application as an alpha in the Play Store, publish it and wait a few hours for it to become active.
• If the debug version of the installed application is already installed on your device, you will have to uninstall it. Or use this technique to run debug and release versions in parallel (but you still need to remove the debug version for the first time).
• Download the release version to your device. Obviously, you can do this from the Play Store by going directly to the application URL, but whenever I tried this, I got the message "item not found". I downloaded the application to my own server and then downloaded it to the device.
• Download the release version to your device. Or use this technique to sign the release build in Android Studio from the keystore, and then deploy the application to your device from Android Studio.
• Launch the release version on your device. If the alpha in the Play Store is not already active, you will see a message stating that the application version is not configured for billing in the application. If alpha is ready, you can continue the testing process.
• When you go to the payment screen, you will need to enter real payment information, even if you do not pay for your purchases. I decided to use my existing PayPal account and not add my credit card details to my test Google account.

Answer 3

Meanwhile, I helped myself by changing the SKU ID to “android.test.purchased” (see http://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/billing_testing.html ), which allows “walks” through the purchase process and play a little with him.

However, in my opinion, this is not a smooth solution and only partially satisfactory, since the developer does not see that the "real" user sees and experiences, but rather receives some result codes from a black box with a fake name (this is even called so) and cannot go beyond the Google Play interface.

Answer 4

For all those who still adhere to this annoying feature, there is a solution with the latest version of Android (5+ Lollipop).

A simple solution 1. Go to the settings, then scroll down to the "Users", 2. Add a new test user. 3. Open the application with this user.

Now you can test your purchases in the application using a test user.

Answer 5

I solved this by uninstalling the app, going to the Play Store and switching to my non-developer account, and downloading and installing the app.

Answer 6

To summarize my own traps:

• Download the application to the alpha channel or beta channel.
• publish your application (publishing in beta or alpha channels does not make your application visible to everyone except those listed on the testers list)
• add your account to the testers list
• go to the "testers" link (something like " https://play.google.com/apps/testing/ <package_name>") and click "participate" (the one I missed)
• publish your inapp objects
• create a version (!) of the application version and download it to the device.

• make sure that the device version and the market version are signed with the same release key

• make sure the market version number is not less than the unit defined in the gradle assembly

Answer 7

You are trying to purchase the same account that is uploaded to the store

as if you downloaded the application in the Android store using [e-mail]

and want to buy using [e-mail], you will receive an error message

Try using a different Google Play account or any other phone.

you cannot buy yourself

Answer 8

I faced the same error, now two main reasons for my failure have been resolved:
1. I did not activate the products in the application, which means that they were inactive
2. If you want to test, you must add beta testers.

Answer 9

I fixed this problem:
1. Using Signed apk
2. I did not activate the products in the application, which means that they were inactive

Answer 10

I solved this error on

• used a signed apk for testing
  
• sku name same as inapp product name
• in the application - active status.
• the application must publish a status show

Answer 11

I ran into the same issue when I manually installed the APK from eclipse on my phone and then manually opened it. The right procedure is to send it to Google play for alpha testing, and then wait for a few hours to be published to your alpha or beta testers, which you must have to manage, create, give them access to to your application. The developer should receive an email with a link in order to provide it to the testers in a few hours. Once this happens, just send it to your community. On your mobile device, create an additional google account (owned by the community) and open gmail and click on the link. He will help you in the Google game, where you automatically download the application as a tester. Install, buy gass .. tada !!

Answer 12

I think the reason you got this result is because you ran the application in a development environment.

To test billing in the application, you need to sign the application. See here and here for more details.

This is really a nuisance and extends the dev loop :(