AppCoins News Update, or ANU for short, is a regular bi-weekly update by the AppCoins team. As usual, we are going to cover dev updates, market reports, team members and upcoming events. This week’s focus is on the recent protocol developments such as the One-Step Payment, the integration of PayPal in the AppCoins BDS Wallet, and the AppCoins team presence at Unite India 2018.

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The Dev Update coming out every two weeks is as certain as the sun coming up every morning. Here it is once again!

We’ve been working hard since the Ada release to solve smaller issues that were left unfixed, and to develop the next features that will come out in the next release. We’re pretty excited about this new batch of features, and we believe you’ll be too.

We’ve been working close to several partners to give us feedback and help us figure out what’s needed to disrupt the mobile economy. From this feedback loop came out what we’ve called: One-Step Payment. This process consists of another way to include our billing system in Android apps. Normally, app stores create complex billing systems with SKU (an ID for each in-app product) management, purchase validators, and processors. In several use cases, either with top-grossing developers or with smaller indie developers, the need for these complex billing systems isn’t there. They just need a component to include payment providers that enable users to pay for in-app items. This can be either because they don’t need SKU management or because they already do it with their own systems, for smaller indie developers and top-grossing developers, respectively.

The One-Step Payment is a method inspired by Stripe, which enables developers to build a very simple URL with the corresponding payment data, which is caught by the AppCoins BDS Wallet. The users then pay using the several payment methods the wallet already provides. Developers can even include a URL with the parameters they need, which is called once the payment is processed. This can be used to validate in their own systems that the payment was done and then manage the SKUs as they see fit.

For these types of developers, the One-Step Payment is the easiest option they have to integrate payment methods in their apps.

Since we’re talking about payment methods, this is a good time to tell you that we are working on integrating PayPal in the AppCoins BDS Wallet as a new payment method. The wallet already integrates credit card payments and cryptocurrency payments (in APPC and APPC Credits), and since PayPal is one of the most preferred methods to pay online, it was the logical step for us to take.

Integrating a worldwide known service such as PayPal in a blockchain-based wallet is another significant milestone for the AppCoins Project.

Maybe you’ve already guessed it but this Dev Update and the next release will heavily revolve around payment methods. As of now, users are not able to choose the payment method they want to use when buying in-app items with the AppCoins BDS Wallet. The wallet chooses the optimal payment method based on a set of conditions:

APPC Credits if the user has enough for the given purchase

if the user has enough for the given purchase APPC if there is enough in the user’s wallet

if there is enough in the user’s wallet Credit card if the user doesn’t have either APPC or APPC Credits

In our opinion, since this isn’t the optimal behavior, we’re developing a way for users to choose the payment method they want to use for each purchase. Users will have a dialog with the several payment methods, which can have some greyed out options. For example, if the user doesn’t have enough APPC, the option to pay with APPC will be greyed out and disabled. This gives a higher level of freedom to the users, and it’s the step we believe is the best for them.

Screen to choose preferred payment method

Regarding all our documentation, we are working on improving it, and the way users access it. We believe having the documentation separated by GitHub repository isn’t the most developer-friendly way to welcome developers to the AppCoins ecosystem. We’re working with a new documentation platform and we are moving everything there with the structure we consider the most adequate to make the developer journey the smoothest possible. We’ll give you more detail once this migration is more advanced.

Lastly, and as a teaser for the next ANU, we’re are also working on including gamification in the wallet to provide our users with more (very significant) incentives and interesting content. We believe you’ll like to read everything about it in the next Dev Update :)