Hi.
How can I take donations via PayPal on my app?
Google billing doesn’t support donations.
I’ve created an app and it has no ads as I don’t want ads in them.
I want people to donate if they like the app and find it useful. I created a button to a PayPal.me page but Google rejected it for not being in the policy. I wrote them but they just sent same rejection again.
I don’t want to bill customers. Google doesn’t support donations via their api. My current solution is also generic enough I hope it can work for apple in future.
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Hey @chibbyo, welcome to the community 
Most likely, Google want you to do this as an in-app purchase (IAP). We don’t have an IAP component right now, but the good news is that we’re working on it.
Why don’t you just added it to your policy so?
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You have to follow Google’s policies, you can’t just do what you like.
It may be worth investigating if you can set up a website for the purpose of receiving donations. You can put your Paypal button on that website. Then from inside your app if someone wants to donate you can open the link to your website and they can donate there.
I don’t know if that’s the optimal solution, or if it’s even allowed under Google’s TOS but it may be worth considering.
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By this I assume you mean Google’s own policy and not part of your app’s policy. My above reply is based on this assumption. If I’m wrong then let me know and I’ll quietly slink away with my tail between my legs.
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Great suggestion!
You could have an in app link to a landing page with your PayPal info.
You could, alternatively build your app however you want and then self host it. I am doing this for an app related to covid19. This would only work for android and you need a server and a little bandwidth, maybe a gig or two a month depending on how many users you expect.
Advertise your app on Facebook, Twitter, face-to-face. Create a bit.ly link to the page and share it
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If you self host it then you can do pretty much anything you like.
But if anyone is going to follow my suggestion they should make sure it’s allowed for apps that are published on Google Play Store.
Sorry I wasn’t clear. It doesn’t follow their policy. But their policy doesn’t seem to have anything to support donations, since I don’t want to make it a “purchase” (there’s some psychology to donating vs buying)
Great idea. I’ll try this and submit and see if they accept it.
I already have a site for the app which is where my privacy policy document is (Google required it). So I can add this to that page. Even though it just seems like just creating one extra hop before the same payment page, I’ll give it a shot. If it is rejected I’ll try hosting one version in my website and another version without donations on Google play
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You could send emails to users. Or A pay for 1 month of pro. Get push messages in your app. Then, send our requests for donations via push message. Push message campaign perhaps? Idk though, this may violate some tos
Thanks, I don’t collect any data from users, don’t know who they are (don’t want to as that makes the privacy policy for the app more complex). Thanks for the suggestion. I’m also trying to be very careful to not give them impression I’m trying to circumvent Google’s policy. I genuinely feel like there is a gap they haven’t catered for in allowing users donate via gpay
Google came back and said they don’t allow donations via apps unless you’re a recognized and validated charity organisation. So I guess that ends that.
Why won’t you do patreon site or ko-fi.com, which you can add button on your app which opens browser.
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Google won’t accept it. They said you can’t take donations via the app unless you’re a charity.
My initial solution opened a PayPal page and that was rejected. Sending people to a ko-fi and then still ending up with a PayPal donation may upset them I’d they find out it’s still the same thing.
I will set up the pages and create something on my website and YouTube so people who go there can still get the call to donate
Wait how is patreon or ko-fi bad? i see it a lot somehow
I guess I’m not 100% certain but it seems a roundabout way of taking a payment without using GPay and it seems that’s what they wanted me to do. But j guess they won’t stop you from connecting to the Patreon site itself so it could work.
Make the button open the ko-fi or paypal link in the device’s browser, rather than in the webview?
It might take people out of your app, but it also might feel more legitimate to users going to Chrome/Safari.
The other thing you can do is provide a link to your website and say something like “Come say hi on our website!”, on which, there is some info, and a nice photo and/ or a big donate button? So it’s not direct, but visitors would see it…
…oh, or setup the webview with a webpage, then after the app is published whack a paypal button on it.
(this may go wrong but I don’t see why it shouldn’t work considering I’ve seen others doing it)
I see that Google want you to pay through Google Play, then they take their cut, but because Thunkable doesn’t provide in-app payments (yet 
), us Thunkers can’t use that option - can we? I suppose you could do a cheap subscription…
The point is, if they like the app, and they pay for it, it’s not really a donation 
Thanks for the suggestions. They’re very good.
To your last paragraph. They aren’t paying for the app, if they like the app they are donating to support the developers creating ad free apps for children. It is voluntary and paying or not doesn’t affect their ability to use the app. So it is a donation 
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