About a year ago, Facebook announced that it was launching subscription payments and local currency support for in-app payments while getting rid of Facebook Credits. In March, the company previewed local currency payments for game developers.
Today, Facebook announced that it’s launching the local currency payments API for all game developers, and that on September 12, it will no longer support Facebook Credits. They’re giving developers 90 days to migrate to local currency payments.
Facebook will also be deprecating Payer Promotions for Facebook Credits in favor of support for Payer Promotions for local currency. This will take place in the coming months. They’ll also deprecate Facebook-sponsored support for TrialPay offers, but TrialPay will continue to support these for Facebook its developers by offering a direct integration solution.
With the new local currency payments API, developers can set prices for in-game items by market, cache static prices with Facebook, and “realize additional reduced latency as a result of fewer server requests for payment completion, like the second server request to confirm order fulfillment and real-time updates to confirm the transaction.”
“We strongly encourage you to start the process now to ensure you have adequate time to integrate local currency pricing and to optimize your app’s payment experience, performance, and pricing,” says Facebook’s Yongyan Liú.
The company encourages developers to consider international pricing, in-game currency, mobile specific stores, and A/B testing.
Documentation is available here.