Publishing an App on the App Store and Play Store from Pakistan

The most important decision is not technical. Apple and Google each let you enrol as an individual or as an organisation, and the account owner is the legal publisher of the app. If your agency registers the account in its own name, your brand ends up published under the agency, and moving the app later means a formal transfer process.

For a company app, enrol under your own registered business and keep the credentials with a senior person rather than a developer's personal email. Give the agency a limited team role instead of the owner login. This keeps ownership clean if you change vendors, and it is the arrangement most stores and auditors expect.

Both stores verify who you are. Organisations are usually asked for a legal entity name, a business identifier that the store can cross-check, and a reachable phone number and website. Individuals are asked for personal identity documents. Mismatches between the name on your documents, your payment profile and your website are the most common reason enrolment stalls.

Prepare the paperwork before you pay anything: the exact registered name of the business, a working company email on your own domain, and a public website that describes what the business does. Requirements and accepted documents change, so read the current enrolment pages from Apple and Google rather than relying on a blog post, including this one.

Store review is as much about paperwork as code. You will need an app name, description, screenshots in the required sizes, an icon, a support contact and a privacy policy hosted at a public address. You also declare what data the app collects and why. These declarations must match what the app actually does, because reviewers and automated checks compare them.

On the build side, Apple requires a signed build that goes through its own testing channel before submission, and Google offers internal and closed testing tracks. Use them. A test group of real staff or customers will find the crashes and confusing screens that a developer's own phone never shows.

Every submission is reviewed, and rejection on a first attempt is normal rather than a disaster. Typical causes are a missing demo login for the reviewer, a privacy declaration that does not match behaviour, broken links, placeholder content, or features that need an explanation. Read the rejection message closely, fix exactly what it names, and reply in the review thread if something needs clarifying.

Do not plan a launch announcement around a fixed approval date, because the stores set their own review pace and do not promise one. Build slack into your marketing schedule, and for time-sensitive campaigns submit well ahead of when you need the app live.

If the app is free and earns nothing in the stores, you can skip most of this. If you charge for the app, sell subscriptions or in-app items, the stores act as the seller of record in many cases and pay you out to a bank account after you complete their financial and tax forms. Getting a bank account that accepts international transfers sorted early avoids stuck payouts.

How that income is taxed and reported in Pakistan is a question for your accountant and the Federal Board of Revenue, not for the app store. Also check whether selling digital goods inside the app must go through the store's own billing, since both stores have rules on this that differ by app type.