The past couple of weeks I have been working on a new project and something a little different from my usual games related projects.



A few weeks ago a colleague in the office (TheBroth) mentioned an idea for an app but didn't have the time / energy to work on it so I thought I would have a stab at it.

The idea is simple. It lets you convert unused Google Play credit into cash.

[![1](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/1.png)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/1.png)

It does it by allow the user to pick from a number of In-App-Purchases

[![2](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/2.png)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/2.png)

They then supply their Paypal email address

[![3](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/3.png)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/3.png)

I then simply send them some money via Paypal. Simples.

[![6](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/6.png)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/6.png)

Im making 10% on each transaction with 30% going to Google and 5% to Paypal therefore the user gets 55% of their credit redeemed. Its not perfect but its better than nothing.

I made the whole thing in a couple of weeks of my part-time time. The Android app was made with React-Native using Typescript. I wrote a custom server using NodeJS (Typescript) on Heroku with a MongoDB data store. I wrote a custom Admin tool and website using React.

Due to the relatively small size of this app I would rather have used a MBaaS solution like Parse but as Parse just announced that they are discontinuing the service and I haven't found a good alternative just yet I thought I would bite the bullet and learn how to do it myself.

As usual I enjoyed the learning experience, there were definitely some teething pains, particularly around the Javascirpt / Typescript tooling and module loading issue but all in all im happy with the result.

If you are interested in checking it out, I have bought the domain here: [https://creditredeemer.com/](https://creditredeemer.com/) and the android app itself is here: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.creditredeemer](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.creditredeemer)

Let me know what you think :)

react-native

react-native

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