Publishing an App on Google Play from Nepal: The Real Checklist

Publishing an Android app on Google Play from Nepal is straightforward once you know the steps, but several of them catch people out: paying the registration fee, the closed-testing requirement for new personal accounts, and app signing details that break sign-in only in the store version. This is the checklist we follow, with the policies as they stand at the time of writing. Google changes them regularly, so confirm anything critical in the Play Console Help Centre.

1. Create the developer account

Google charges a one-time registration fee of USD 25. From Nepal you will need a card enabled for international payments — typically a dollar card or a card your bank has enabled for international use. Ask your bank before you start; the payment failing is a common first hurdle.

Decide early whether the account is personal or for an organisation. An organisation account shows your company as the developer and is the better long-term choice for a business, but it requires a D-U-N-S number for the company, which can take time to obtain. Both types require identity verification, and the details you enter are shown publicly on your store listing.

2. Plan for closed testing (personal accounts)

New personal developer accounts must run a closed test before they can apply for production access. At the time of writing that means at least 12 testers opted in for at least 14 days in a row. Only after that can you apply to publish publicly.

Line up your testers before you upload: staff, friendly customers, family. Ask them to actually open the app over those two weeks; Google asks about testing engagement when you apply for production.

3. Build a release the store accepts

• Upload an Android App Bundle (AAB), not an APK. New apps must use the bundle format.
• Target a recent Android API level. Google raises the minimum each year, and apps that fall behind can stop being offered to new users.
• Increase the versionCode on every upload. Play rejects a bundle whose version code it has already seen, even from a deleted draft.
• Request only the permissions you need. Sensitive permissions, such as installing other packages or reading SMS, need a declaration and are often refused.

4. Understand Play App Signing

With Play App Signing, you sign your upload with an upload key and Google re-signs the app with its own app signing key before delivering it to users. That second certificate has a different fingerprint from the one on your machine.

This matters if your app uses Google sign-in, Firebase or any API restricted by certificate fingerprint. If you only registered your own key's SHA-1, everything works in your test builds and breaks only in the version downloaded from Play. Copy the app signing key's SHA-1 and SHA-256 from the Play Console (App integrity) and add them to your Google Cloud OAuth client and Firebase project. We learned this one shipping a production app; it is now the first thing on our release list.

5. Prepare the store listing

6. Complete the policy forms

1. 1Fill in the Data safety form honestly: what data you collect, whether it is shared, and whether it is encrypted in transit.
2. 2Complete the content rating questionnaire.
3. 3Declare the target audience and whether the app is aimed at children.
4. 4Answer the ads declaration and any permission declarations.
5. 5If the app needs a login, give reviewers test credentials in App access, or the review will fail.

7. Release, then roll out gradually

Review times vary from hours to several days, and first submissions tend to take longest. Once approved, consider a staged rollout — releasing to a percentage of users first — so a bad release reaches fewer people. Watch the Android vitals and crash reports in the first days after every release.

Apps that do not belong on Play

Not every app needs the store. An internal staff app can be distributed directly as an APK from a page behind a login. That is legitimate and fast, but users have to allow installs from unknown sources and will see Google Play Protect warnings for new versions, and the app has to handle its own updates safely — verifying each download's checksum and signature before installing. For anything customer-facing, Play is the better route.

Where to start

Open the developer account and line up your 12 testers now, even before the app is finished; the 14-day clock and the paperwork are what usually delay launch, not the code. If you would like help, our mobile app development work includes the Play submission. You can see a live example in our Sintech case study, and our guide to PWA versus native apps covers whether you need the store at all.