Repost: Chrome Web Store Payments -- Deprecation Notice

[Simeon Vincent]

NOTE: This email was originally sent to registered extension developers on Sept. 21, 2020.

Dear Developer,

When we launched the Chrome Web Store 11 years ago, there weren't a lot of ways for our developers to take payment from users. Today, there is a thriving ecosystem of payment providers offering a far more diverse set of features than a single provider could hope to. Now that our developers have so many great options to choose from, we can comfortably sunset our own payments integration.

This decision has no effect on extensions that don't use Chrome Web Store payments. Developers looking to monetize their extensions can still do so using third-party providers.

Deprecation timeline

The Chrome Web Store payments API is deprecated as of Sept 21st, 2020 and will be shut down over the coming months. There are many other ways to monetize your extensions; if you currently use Chrome Web Store payments, you’ll need to migrate to one of them.

• Now: You can no longer create new paid extensions or in-app items. This began as a temporary restriction in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 situation. This change is now made permanent.
• December 1, 2020: Free trials are disabled. The "Try Now" button in CWS will no longer be visible, and in-app free trial requests will result in an error.
• February 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.

What it means to 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.

See the payments deprecation page for more details on how to prepare for this change.

Thank you for your cooperation, and for your participation in the Chrome extension ecosystem!

- The Google Chrome Web Store team

[Deliaz]

It is sad to hear. 

Isn't it too soon? 

[tradingc...@gmail.com]

This triggered some serious shitstorm on HackerNews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24548876

[Vasco Gomes]

Hi,  does anyone has a tutorial on how to implement a payment system on strype or braintree to work with our extensions?

That would be life saver!

Greetings.