Google Play Billing: Pending purchases not available for subscriptions?

Question

Context: We have a TV app that offers as its only in-app item a monthly subscription.

I am mostly looking for confirmation of what I believe to be true:

• Since version 2.0 of the Google Play Billing Library there is a thing called pending purchases. The main real use case seems to be purchases which the user pays for in cash in some registered store. During the time between the initial purchase in the app and the cash payment in the store the purchase is pending.
• To test these pending purchases there should now be two additional payment methods for license testers, namely "Slow test card, approves after a few minutes" and "Slow test card, declines after a few minutes".
• My colleagues and I have not found these two additional test payment methods, nor have some other people.
• Google's official documentation notes: "Additional forms of payment are not available for subscriptions purchases."
• Since pending purchases can only result from these "additional forms of payment" (besides credit cards, Play Store gift cards, etc.) this means that pending purchases can not happen for subscription items and this explains why neither of us sees the two additional payment methods in our tests

True or false?

Esoteric

I have exactly the same doubts and questions. Did you find any answer ? – Currish

The testing cards only appear for consumable products – Hastie

Answer 1

It seems that we have to handle those pending purchases, even for subscription purchases : https://github.com/jamesmontemagno/InAppBillingPlugin/issues/419

Currish

Cool, thanks for asking and for providing the link! I have to admit, though, that I am still confused... I don't see the connection between Google Play Billing and Application Licensing...? If you work out what really needs to be done, would you mind posting a complete "tutorial" here? – Esoteric

@ david.mihola No problem! I did implement it, but in the simplest way ever, as James Montemagno recommended. – Currish

@JonathanF. What property of the stored purchase did you use to compare against the returned purchase? Was it Id or TransationId or something else? – Gluck

@SachK I'm relying on the InAppBillingPurchase.PurchaseToken, since it is a "Unique token identifying the purchase for a given item". – Currish