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 one-step payment, new PayPal payment method, and Unite India 2018.

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Dev Update

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Featured Team Member

Upcoming Events

We’ve been working hard to deliver a release before the Holidays with brand new features for developers and users alike. We’re pretty excited with what will be packed in this release, so read on.

For Developers

Up until now, we’ve been focused on delivering a billing system as robust as possible, with as many features as developers would like to have. This means SKU management, purchase validators, processors, and much more. One can see that there’s a lot going on under the hood when an in-app item is purchased. We’ve tried to make the integration as simple as possible for developers. However, there’s always an inherent complexity, even if it isn’t much.

Because of this, we’ve devised a different way for developers to integrate payments using the AppCoins BDS Wallet and the AppCoins Protocol. We’ve called it One-Step Payment, and it simplifies the integration process to a great deal. This method is targeted for developers that don’t require purchases to be managed by our system because they already do it by themselves, and for developers that don’t manage purchases occurring inside their apps because they just don’t need to.

With One-Step Payment, developers can build a simple URL with the necessary parameters to enable users to pay for in-app items. That’s it, no other steps are needed! That URL will trigger the wallet, which will handle the payment. Developers can even pass a callback URL, which is called by our system when the payment is done. They can use this feature to track purchases with their systems.

One-Step Payment is the easiest way to integrate payments inside Android apps.

For Users

We’ve been working on three main features that we believe will be great for users that are interested in paying for in-app items using the AppCoins Protocol.

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

From our viewpoint, 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 best for them.

Screen to choose preferred payment method

As you can see in the image above, there’s a new payment method: PayPal. The next release of the AppCoins BDS Wallet will be shipped with PayPal integrated. Integrating a worldwide known service such as PayPal in a blockchain-based wallet is another significant milestone for the AppCoins Project. In addition, we’ve built support for 3D Secure payments, when they are available.

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

In addition, we’ve been toying with the idea of rewarding users for their purchase activity. The next release will also see the rise of a new feature in the wallet that enables users to get rewards in APPC Credits for each purchase they make. The amount of APPC Credits earned in any single purchase depends on the level of the user. In turn, the level of the user is based on the amount of APPC spent on in-app purchases. Purchases done with PayPal and credit card will also count, as the amount paid in the local currency is converted in APPC at the moment the purchase is done using the trading rate at that time.

Screen showing user’s current level

This screen shows the current level of the user and the amount of APPC Credits already earned because of the bonuses. Users are also able to see how much they need to spend in APPC to reach higher levels, as well as the bonus of each level.

Dialog detailing how to level up

We believe these features not only ease the use of the AppCoins BDS Wallet for payments, but we also believe it will incentivize users to contribute to the dynamic of the ecosystem, by giving them rewards to be spent in in-app purchases.

Following last month’s protocol KPIs performance, on this ANU we have collected the values from November, regarding both flows using AppCoins, IAP and User Acquisition, the number of apps downloaded with the integration of AppCoins as well as indicators from the SDK, as the table shows below.