Paid Chrome extensions will be shutdown soon by Google
The Chrome Web Store payments system is now deprecated and will be shut down over the coming months, announced by Google.
What it means for developers ?
If you don’t use Chrome Web Store payments to monetize your extension, then this does not affect you and you don’t have to do anything.
If you use Chrome Web Store payments to charge for your extension or in-app purchases, you’ll need to migrate to another payments processor in the near future. If you use the licensing API to keep track of who has paid, you’ll need to implement another way of tracking user licenses.
According to Google,. though that’s cementing a policy that has already been in place since March. And that policy follows a temporary suspension of publishing paid extensions in January after Google noticed an uptick in fraudulent transactions that aimed to exploit users.
If you are affected by this change. Specifically, you’ll need to make changes if you monetize your extensions in any of the following ways:
- If you have configured a one-time purchase for your extension using the developer dashboard.
- If you use any of the following resources in the Chrome Web Store API:
- InAppProducts
- UserLicenses
- Payments
- If you use the following helper methods provided by buy.js:
- google.payments.inapp.getSkuDetails
- google.payments.inapp.buy
- google.payments.inapp.getPurchases
- google.payments.inapp.consumePurchase
Google will gradually phase out other functionality over the coming months, and on February 1st, Google says that existing extensions can no longer charge customers using the Chrome Web Store’s payments system. Here’s the full timeline:
- March 27, 2020 Publishing of paid items temporarily disabled.
- September 21, 2020 You can no longer create new paid extensions or in-app items. This change, in effect since March 2020, is now permanent.
- December 1, 2020 Free trials are disabled. The “Try Now” button in CWS will no longer be visible, and in-app free trials requests will result in an error.
- Feb 1, 2021 Your existing items and in-app purchases can no longer charge money with Chrome Web Store payments. You can still query license information for previously paid purchases and subscriptions. (The licensing API will accurately reflect the status of active subscriptions, but these subscriptions won’t auto-renew.)
- At some future time The licensing API will no longer allow you to determine license status for your users.
