Children can now send “Purchase Requests” to their parent or guardian when shopping on the Google Play Store. This saves you the trouble of setting up a family payment method, and more importantly, it gives you greater control over the apps, games, and in-app content purchased by your kid.

Purchase Requests are pretty straightforward. If a child in your “family group” wants to buy something in Google Play, they need to send you a request. You’ll receive a notification, and from there, you can approve or deny the purchase. (All requests are recorded in your Google Play history, and if you miss a request, it will sit in the pending tab.)

You can only use this feature if you’ve set up a family group, which is a pretty simple process. Just open Google Play, tap your profile icon in the top right, select “Settings,” and tap “Family.” Once you’ve added your family to a group, you can manage accounts and share some purchases.

Setting up a family group also opens the door to “family payment methods.” Essentially, a family payment method is a debit or credit card that can be shared across accounts. But if you set up a family payment method, you cannot use Purchase Requests. (That said, you can require approval for all purchases when using a family payment method.)

Interestingly, Purchase Requests doesn’t work for music or movies. It’s only available for apps, games, and in-app purchases.

Source: Google