Mar 25, 2011 10:49 GMT  ·  By

Mountain View-based software giant Google has unveiled plans to put in place Android Market In-app Billing starting with this quarter, and it seems that they would indeed be able to meet the deadline.

According to a recent post on the Android Developers blog, the new feature is set to become available as soon as next week, offering developers one more possibility to monetize their applications.

“Back in January we announced our plan to introduce Android Market In-app Billing this quarter. We're pleased to let you know that we will be launching In-app Billing next week,” Eric Chu, Android Developer Ecosystem, notes in the aforementioned blog post.

Prior to the full launch of the new service, Google is opening the Android Market for the upload of applications that support the feature, and for testing of these pieces of software.

App builders who already have In-app Billing packed inside their Android software shoudl head over to the Developer Console for testing the in-app purchases.

“You can now upload your apps to the Developer Console, create a catalog of in-app products, and set prices for them,” the aforementioned post reads.

“You can then set up accounts to test in-app purchases. During these test transactions, the In-app Billing service interacts with your app exactly as it will for actual users and live transactions.”

However, the applications won't be published until the service is up and running, which , as stated above, should happen only next week.

Even so, developers would be able to upload their applications to the portal during the test development phase. Users would have access to these apps starting with the next week.

“To get you started, we’ve updated the developer documentation with information about how to set up product lists and test your in-app products. Also, it is absolutely essential that you review the security guidelines to make sure your billing implementation is secure,” Eric Chu concludes.