Announcing RevenueCat virtual currency – monetize beyond subscriptions

Today, we’re excited to announce that virtual currency support is now live for all RevenueCat users

No, we’re not pivoting into crypto (no CatCoins yet), but rather launched support for in-app currencies like coins, credits, or tokens users can buy and spend in your app

After months in closed beta with feedback from games, AI-apps, and more, we’ve refined this feature to be ready for prime time. In fact, despite being in “beta”, many big apps are already using virtual currency in production to boost revenue and engagement

In-app coins or currency support in RevenueCat opens up monetization options beyond traditional subscriptions or consumables, letting you track user currency balances, sell packs of coins or credits, grant bonus currency via subscriptions, and much more. If you’ve ever wanted to add an in-app currency (think coins, gems, tokens) to your app’s economy, we now have you covered across iOS, Android, and web, all fully integrated into our dashboard and APIs

Want the full technical breakdown? See the docs for Virtual Currency implementation steps, code examples, and more

Virtual currencies are supported in the following SDK versions:

SDK	Supported Versions
iOS	5.32.0+
Android	9.1.0+
React Native	9.1.0+
Flutter	9.1.0+
Capacitor	11.1.0+
Unity	8.1.0+

What can you do with virtual currencies in modern apps?

Virtual currencies unlock flexible pricing and new purchase experiences that weren’t possible with subscriptions alone. Here are a few ways you could use this feature:

AI apps and usage-based pricing

If your app uses AI or other pay-per-use features, virtual currency lets you charge power users for exactly what they consume

For example, an AI image generator might give free users some credits each day and sell packs of credits for heavy users. This usage-based model ensures your biggest fans can pay for more output without committing to a high recurring fee

It’s a perfect complement to subscriptions or can even replace them in regions where recurring payments are tricky (for instance, parts of Asia where subscription regulations favor consumables)

Content apps with pay-per-item

Apps for books, stories, music, or videos can use a coin system to monetize individual pieces of content

Instead of locking everything behind a subscription, you could let users unlock chapters, songs, or articles with a few coins. This creates a low-friction purchase for casual users (who might balk at a full subscription) while still generating revenue on a per-item basis. Many reading apps and episodic story games already use this model, and now you can implement it without building a custom currency backend

Virtual currencies are extremely popular in content and e-learning apps for exactly this reason: they drop the barrier to entry for spending

Raise the ceiling, drop the floor 

Virtual currency lets you raise your revenue ceiling and lower the floor of entry

High spenders can keep buying more currency packs on top of a subscription, no longer limited to a fixed monthly price. At the same time, more price-sensitive users can spend just $0.99 on a small pack of coins when they feel like it, rather than committing to a larger purchase. In other words, you can capture value from every segment of users

Combining subscriptions with one-off consumable purchases diversifies your revenue stream and maximizes retention, allowing your app to cater to everyone from casual tippers to superfans willing to spend big

Games (and other creative uses)

Of course, mobile games are a classic use case – from buying gems to unlock levels, to coins for cosmetic items, a virtual currency is the lifeblood of many game economies 

With RevenueCat, even game developers can now avoid building their own backend for currency management. But it doesn’t stop at games: we’re excited to see creative applications beyond the usual suspects. Maybe you’ll use a token system to reward educational progress, or a point system to incentivize content creation in a social app

The possibilities are endless, and if your app can benefit from an in-app economy, we’ve got the infrastructure to support it

How to implement virtual currencies in your app

One of our goals was to make virtual currencies as easy to implement as subscriptions. We designed RevenueCat’s virtual currency support to handle a wide range of scenarios out-of-the-box, from simple coin packs to complex hybrid models. Here are a few common implementation patterns and how RevenueCat supports them

Direct purchase of currency (consumables) 

Sell packs of coins or credits just like any other in-app purchase

You can define a consumable product in App Store/Play Store (for example, “100 Coins for $4.99”) and associate it with your RevenueCat virtual currency. We will automatically add the specified amount to your user’s balance when the purchase is made

No more building custom receipt validation or balance tracking. We handle the secure account balance management for you behind the scenes

Subscriptions that grant currency 

You can also use subscriptions to add currency on a regular basis

For example, a monthly subscription might give the user 100 credits each month as part of a premium plan. RevenueCat supports this natively: when you associate a subscription product with a virtual currency, the user’s balance will increase on each subscription renewal (and you can even choose to grant the currency immediately when a free trial starts)

This effectively lets you create subscription bundles (e.g. “Pro Plan: $9.99/month and get 500 coins monthly”) with minimal effort. It’s a great way to mix the predictability of subscriptions with the flexibility of consumables

Subscriber-exclusive discounts or bonuses

Want to reward your subscribers with better deals on currency? With a bit of configuration, you can do that too

For instance, you might offer a “double coins” pack that only appears for active subscribers (for example, subscribers pay $4.99 and get 200 coins instead of the usual 100). Using our Targeting feature and by defining a custom offering for specific subscription tiers, it’s straightforward to show special currency products or pricing to certain user segments (like subscribers). You could also implement bonuses via server logic — for example, grant a bonus batch of coins whenever a subscribed user buys a consumable pack

The virtual currency system is flexible: it works alongside entitlements, experiments, and webhooks, so you can get as creative as you want with promotions and perks

Above: Configuring a new virtual currency in the RevenueCat dashboard is simple. You can define a currency code, name, icon, and description for up to 100 different virtual currencies per project . In this example, we’re adding a currency called “Gold” — it took just a few seconds to set up

Above: Associating in-app products with your virtual currency. Here, a product (subscription or one-time purchase) is linked to deposit 50 Gold into the user’s balance whenever the purchase occurs. RevenueCat even lets you toggle whether a subscription should grant the currency when a free trial starts (as seen in the checkbox) or only on paid renewals. All of this happens automatically. Once configured, every purchase of that product will increase the customer’s currency balance, which you can view in the dashboard or retrieve via API. Secure balance updates are handled for you, so you can focus on designing great monetization, not ledger management

It’s worth noting that virtual currency support is part of RevenueCat’s standard feature set for all plans. Just like our other features (Experiments, Paywalls, etc.), it’s included at no extra cost, meaning you start for free and only pay when your app is earning over $2.5k per month. So whether you’re a hobby dev or running a top-100 app, you can start experimenting with in-app currency right away

One more thing… The Shipaton 2025 HAMM Award

RevenueCat’s global hackathon, Shipaton 2025, is happening now and we’re offering some serious incentives for creative app builders

There’s over $350,000 in prizes up for grabs, including trips to New York and getting your app featured on a giant Times Square billboard! In line with our mission to help you make more money, we’ve introduced a new HAMM Award (Help Apps Make Money) to honor the project with the most creative monetization strategy mixing subscriptions, virtual currency, or other revenue streams

This is your chance to show off an inventive use of virtual currency (or any monetization model) and get rewarded for it. Whether or not you’re participating in Shipaton, we find it inspiring to see developers push the boundaries of how apps can make money  and we can’t wait to see what you come up with

---

Ready to get started? Virtual currency support is live in the RevenueCat dashboard. After you’ve set up your currencies, you can fetch currency balances through our Developer API 2.0.0, or in your app via the SDK. Need some technical support? Check out the virtual currency docs, or reach out

We’re eager for you to try it out, start monetizing better, and let us know what you think. Our team is listening closely to your feedback to help shape where we take this feature next

The era of coins and credits in RevenueCat has begun, and you’re invited to build the next big thing with it. Happy monetizing, and happy building!