For context: I am actively developing an application with a variety of subscription plans that govern the end user’s use of the application. Each plan comes with a number of units, which the app tracks and decrements until said number reaches 0, at which point the user will need to either upgrade to a new plan or wait until the next month.

Yesterday, I had a chat with a key stakeholder about this application. During the conversation, they asked if there was some sort of “test mode” where the application would allow each authorized tester to use the application without going through the payment flow each time an affected tester signs up or uses up the units they would otherwise get. (The test payment flow includes a fictional credit card so that no real money is used.)

Such a mode does not currently exist.

Additional information: Our login flow uses Facebook. When a user logs in, Facebook gives the app an App User ID that it can use to refer to the user in the application database. So we can always go into the database and specify which of the user IDs stored there should be granted “unlimited” access (which would be revoked as needed).