What Apple has been doing in its developer program for years is now also being introduced by Google: developers have to verify themselves. This is about striving for transparency and protection against dangers for potential app users.
If you created your store account after September 2023, this is no longer valid. Verification has already taken place.
After you have logged into the Google Play Console, a highlighted field will alert you to confirm your developer account by a certain date. This usually appears 60 days before the selected deadline. To get started, click on "Get started now".
After clicking on “Get started now”, the various steps are listed again - click on Start in the bottom right-hand corner.
The first step is to select the account type. Select “Organization account” here.
In the next step, a payment profile must be created or selected in order to link it to the developer account.
In our case, the company payment profile is also linked to the account of the developer account creator. If this is also the case for you, simply select it - otherwise it is absolutely necessary to create a new payment profile.
If the company payment profile has been selected, the D-U-N-S number must be entered.
If you don't know your D-U-N-S number by heart (you shouldn't), there are three options:
search for your company on the dun & bradstreet platform
search your mail program - to create an Apple developer account, it has always been mandatory to enter your D-U-N-S number
otherwise you can also contact Dominik Leitner (dol@ovos.at), who should have a list of all D-U-N-S numbers of ovos customers.
Then just click on “Confirm” ...
... and then click “Ok” again
All the information entered so far for the payment profile is then summarized - click on “Next” again at the bottom right.
Now it is necessary to provide information about the company.
Type of organization
Company
Nonprofit organization
Academic institution
Public authority
Size of the organization
1-10
11-50
51-100
101-1.000
Over 1,000 employees
Phone number of the organization
Website of the organization
Contact details must now be entered - these contact details must be confirmed. This should also be the person who manages the store account.
Contact person
Contact e-mail address (confirmed with one-time password)
Preferred language for email communication
Contact telephone number (confirmed with one-time password)
The same person should also be the contact person for the questions “Developer's telephone number”, “Developer's e-mail address”. This should not be an ovos e-mail address - but a direct support request for the app, which can be of a content or technical nature. If it is of a technical nature, you are welcome to contact us at any time, but it is not intended that we at ovos will appear here.
After clicking on “Next”, all information will be summarized again.
A tick must be placed in the “Confirmation” area and then “Save” must be pressed.
The information provided is now being processed by Google. Now it's time to wait.
Important: As part of the account confirmation process, you may be asked to confirm your identity and organization with a valid government-issued ID and an official document. You may also need to confirm your merchant payment details.
Official instructions
Here are some instructions that Google finally provided itself: