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The other thing about a paid messenger service is that you not only have to pay the small fee, but convince your friends and family to pay as well, not to mention getting them to believe that the app is trustworthy and won't result in sketchy charges. This makes it so much easier to pitch free messaging apps, since you can always tell them to uninstall it if they don't like it.

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That's why I believe the right payment model for paid apps/services is being able to sponsor another user.

The Apple App Store allows this (you can gift apps), but Google Play has no such mechanism unfortunately.

Threema would need to switch to an in-app purchase model in order to be able to handle "gifted/sponsored apps" manually, but then people would probably be pissed because "the app looks free but then requests a payment".

The Android version can also be obtained (and gifted) through https://shop.threema.ch/, but this requires manually installing an APK. The best way would be for Google to provide a means to gift apps to others in the Play store. I really can't comprehend why they don't do this.

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