Here’s Your First Look at In-App Purchases on watchOS

Earlier this month, Apple rolled out watchOS 6.2 beta to developers which included the ability for Apple Watch apps to offer in-app purchases, right from a customer’s wrist. “You’ll be able to offer in-app purchases directly in your watchOS apps, so users can access premium content,” noted Apple.

Apple also said that developers can get started by downloading Xcode 11.4 beta and using the StoreKit API to build their app for the beta of watchOS 6.2, which is exactly what the folks over at RevenueCat did.

To find out how Apple implemented the flow, the developers added support to the RevenueCat Purchases SDK and tried out the purchasing flow on watchOS. 

Here’s how in-app purchases seem to work on the Apple Watch:

At least for the sandbox case, you are required to enter a password. This can be done on the watch (excruciating) or you can grab your phone to enter the password. Hopefully, if the watch is on your wrist and authenticated, you won’t need to do this. Ideally, it works with the similar authentication mechanism that Apple Pay on the watch uses.

The flow pretty much mimics what we’re used to on iOS as far as modals and messaging.

With the public release of watchOS 6.2, it will be interesting to see how developers choose to use IAP support on watchOS.