Certify In-Skill Purchasing Skills

Note: Sign in to the developer console to build or publish your skill.

During the certification review, Amazon evaluates your in-skill products and your custom skill. To prepare your in-skill purchasing (ISP) skill for certification, review the submission checklist and the requirements for skills that allow purchases.

Before you submit your skill for certification, review the following certification tips.

Important: If you add, update, or discontinue products you must submit your skill for recertification.

Product description

Review the product descriptions and prompts for your in-skill products in the Alexa developer console. To view your products, see View the in-skill products for a skill.

Make sure that you verify the following items:

All the fields for the product are complete with your product information.
List prices for your products are in the pricing fields only.
All product names and descriptions are free of typos, emoticons, and special characters.
Each product description clearly explains what the product provides.
The list price isn't included in the product suggestion, product description, or purchase prompt.
All placeholder values in the product templates are customized to your products. For example, include valid icon URLs specific to your products.
All products have an associated icon, and the icon URLs resolve correctly.

Skill description

Review your skill description in the Alexa app. To find your skill, open the Alexa app, tap Skills, and then scroll to locate to your skill.

Verify the following items:

Your skill description states that the skill offers in-skill purchases.
You can describe the premium content in the skill description, but don't include a call to action or pricing information.
The description identifies the different types of products that you offer and how to use them. For example, if you offer a consumable product that expires a certain amount of time after the first usage, make that clear in your description.

ISP purchase and cancel flows

In the following table, test the listed in-skill purchasing flows to verify that your skill meets the expected results.

ISP flow	Expected results
Direct purchase request	Start the skill, and then ask, "What can I buy?" The skill response gives information about all the products available for purchase. Make sure that discontinued products aren't included in the response. Verify for all sample utterances.
Direct purchase request and availability of product	Ask to buy each product that your skill offers and try to use the product immediately. Review the purchase receipt for each item. The description and image for the product should reflect the product purchased accurately.
Direct purchase request and availability of product in next session	Ask to buy each product that your skill offers, and then end the skill session. Resume the skill, and then try to use each product.
Purchase suggestion	Your product offers occur in a context that makes sense to the customer. A customer knows what the skill asks them to purchase and why. Make sure that the product suggestion and the purchase prompt are different and don't include the list price. Verify that no purchase suggestion occurs for discontinued products.
Purchase suggestion - already purchased	Buy a product and start a flow that prompts a purchase suggestion, if the customer hasn't purchased the product. Make sure that the customer doesn't receive a purchase suggestion to buy a product they already own.
Consumable purchase	Purchase multiple consumable products, and then use at least one. Disable the skill, and then re-enable the skill. Make sure that you can use one of the consumables again. Ask for the inventory of consumable products and make sure that the reported count is accurate.
Consumable purchase - check inventory	Purchase and use multiple consumable products, and then ask for the inventory of consumable products. Make sure that the reported count is accurate.
Purchase suggestion - decline upsell	Complete a scenario that results in a purchase suggestion, and then decline the suggestion. Verify that the customer doesn't enter the purchase flow, and that the skill continues to provide free content and previously purchased content.
Purchase suggestion - no repeat after decline upsell	Complete a scenario that results in a purchase suggestion, and then decline the suggestion. Complete the same flow again. Verify that your skill doesn't offer a purchase suggestion for the same product that they declined.
Purchase suggestion - decline purchase	Complete a scenario that results in a purchase suggestion, accept the suggestion, but decline the purchase prompt. Verify that the customer doesn't enter the purchase flow, and that the skill continues to provide free content and previously purchased content.
Discontinued products	Buy a product, and then discontinue the product. Make sure that the customer can continue to access the premium content from the discontinued product.
Discontinued products - not available to buy	Start a flow that prompts a purchase suggestion for the discontinued product. Start a flow for a direct buy. Verify that the discontinued product isn't offered in either flow.
Cancel subscription	Ask your skill to cancel a subscription with a voice request. Verify that your skill handles the cancel flow correctly.
Refund consumables and one-time purchases	Ask your skill for a refund of a consumable or one-time purchase with a voice request. Verify that your skill handles the refund flow correctly.
Erroneous payment information	Set up erroneous payment information in the Amazon account for the test user. Verify that the skill continues to provide free content and previously purchased content. The Amazon purchase flow provides a failure message to the user. Make sure that your skill doesn't repeat the error information.

Provide test instructions

Before you submit your skill for certification, make sure that you specify each in-skill product name in the Testing Instructions for the skill. Include guidance about how to determine the available products and how to use each product. If your skill contains purchase suggestions, include instructions about how to reach the purchase prompts for each product. If your skill offers consumables, include instructions about how to use the consumable products after purchase and how to check the inventory of remaining units.

In the developer console, Testing Instructions are on the Distribution page in the Privacy and Compliance section. For more details, see Define Skill Store Details for Publication.

Verify the release dates for products

After a skill is live, you can't change the release date for a product. Make sure that you specified the correct dates. For more details, see pricing and the pricing object section of the product schema.

Other certification tips

Before you submit your skill for certification, review these general certification tips:

Review all locales that your skill supports. Make sure that you don't offer in-skill products in locales that don't support ISP. Don't add any references to premium content in your welcome prompts, skill interaction, and help prompts.
All ISP skills must support cancel and refund flows. Handover the cancellation and refund requests to Alexa.
Your first purchase suggestion message is an opportunity to inform the customer about your products and gather more customer interest in these products. Make the message thoughtful and clear.
Complete the tax identity interview.
Enter your payment information in your Amazon developer account.
Make sure that there are no purchase suggestions or other references to products that users can no longer buy.
If you offer consumables, make sure that you store the customer's inventory with their userId and you don't clear their data when the customer disables the skill. For details, see Manage the inventory for consumable purchases.

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Last updated: Sep 10, 2024