If a user subscribes in-app, it is always refunded exactly three days later. Like this:
Intended behaviour is for the subscription to remain activated and payment not to be refunded.
Why might this happen?
Google has updated its In-App payment policies a while back and you'd need to acknowledge the payment within three days in order to retain the payment. Otherwise, your payment would get automatically refunded.
There is a new acknowledge() method available so you'd need to acknowledge your purchase.
Google states that the acknowledgement should only place after processing and granting the said features that come with In-App purchase.
See more information here.
If you do not acknowledge a purchase within three days, the user automatically receives a refund, and Google Play revokes the purchase.
https://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/billing_library_releases_notes#release-2_0
Related
Our app that is in development will have the following 2 IAPs set up:
$12.99/mo as an auto-renewable subscription.
$9.99/mo as an auto-renewable subscription (if you've entered an invite code).
Obviously if the user enters the invite code BEFORE subscribing, we can ping the Apple servers with the lower-price IAP.
But our issue is: We're (planning on) allowing users to enter the invite code whenever they want, including AFTER they're already a paying subscriber. That way we can offer the discount for any future months they're a subscriber within our app.
Has anyone done this? Is this possible? Etc...
Update 8/30/2015:
Unless someone provides us with the knowledge / ability to do otherwise, we've come to the conclusion that it's NOT possible. We even reached out to Apple and they said there's no API for such thing on their end.
That being said, we're going with the following approach:
If a user subscribes BEFORE an invite code is entered, they're charged the higher of the 2 prices.
If a user enters a code while ALREADY subscribed, they must unsubscribe, then re-subscribe to obtain the lower price point.
If a user subscribes AFTER an invite code is entered, they're charged the lower of the 2 prices.
UPDATE 9/23/2016
there's something called Subscription Groups in iTunes Connect that Apple recently introduced with Auto-Renew subscriptions. A user is only allowed to subscribe to 1 of the subscriptions within a group at a time. Thereby allowing a user to shift between "tiers". This is a possible solution to those coming across this question in the future.
I am developing an app which requires auto renew subscription monthly and I want to maintain that on per user basis who logged into my app. is it possible anyhow with in app purchase. Also how can we handle cancelation of subscriptions ?
I want to maintain all this on my own server.
In the StoreKit documentation, it mentioned in Cancellation section:
A subscription is paid for in full when it’s purchased and can be
refunded only by contacting Apple customer service. For example, if
the user accidentally buys the wrong product, customer support can
cancel the subscription and issue a refund. It’s not possible for
customers to change their mind in the middle of a subscription period
and decide they don’t want to pay for the rest of the subscription.
To check whether a purchase has been canceled, look for the
Cancellation Date field in the receipt. If the field has a date in it,
regardless of the subscription’s expiration date, the purchase has
been canceled—treat a canceled receipt the same as if no purchase had
ever been made.
Depending on the type of product, you may be able to check only the
currently active subscription, or you may need to check all past
subscriptions. For example, a magazine app would need to check all
past subscriptions to determine which issues the user had access to.
Bear in mind that users can cancel the subscription anytime without opening your App. Therefore, you have to check the status of subscription every time the user logs into your App.
I need to build an app for a system, which already has a subscription on its website. It looks like Apple doesn't allow to use any own subscriptions and forces to integrate any app with iOS in-app subscriptions.
Is it any way to integrate two subscription systems? The main problem is that users can manage iOS subscriptions via iTunes and I can't find whether it's possible to get information about this and to stop subscription in the existing system if it's stopped via iTunes.
So is it possible to get notifications about unsubscribed iTunes users?
Using third party subscriptions
First off, it is possible to support an existing subscription system in your app, but it must be in addition to the App Store subscriptions. Also you have to be very careful about the UI you use. You can't prompt users to bypass the App Store and purchase through your server, but you can offer existing subscribers the ability to sign in with credentials they may have previously obtained through your website.
That said, Apple can be fairly capricious in their rulings on what is and isn't allowed in the App Store. I have worked on apps that have done this sort of thing, but they have been for fairly well known magazine publications. There's no guarantee that they will allow it for everyone.
Detecting unsubscribed App Store subscriptions
As for using App Store subscriptions, when a user purchases a subscription in your app, they will receive a receipt in the SKPaymentTransaction object. This receipt should be posted to your backend server to make sure it is valid before you give the user access to anything. See the In-App Purchase Programming Guide for more details.
When you setup a subscription type, you specify how long that subscription lasts. So if you log the transaction date in the SKPaymentTransaction when you receive a receipt, you can determine exactly when that subscription should expire by adding the duration of the subscription to the transaction date.
If it's an auto-renewing subscription, you will receive a new receipt when the subscription is renewed. So once you have validated that with your backend server, you can update your expiry date based on the new transaction date. If you don't receive a new receipt before the first one expires, it's likely the user has cancelled their subscription.
On the backend, your server can also tell when a particular subscription will expire based on the response from the verification server. First there is the status code which will tell you whether the subscription has already expired, but there is also an expiry date returned in the decoded receipt which will tell you when it is expected to expire if it hasn't already.
For more details, see the Auto-Renewable Subscriptions documentation.
Testing auto-renewing subscriptions
It's worth noting that when you are testing auto-renewing subscriptions in the App Store sandbox environment, the length of the various subscription types is dramatically shortened to make it easier to test. For example a 1 week subscription lasts only 3 minutes in the sandbox environment. You can see the full list of times in the iTunes Connect Developer Guide.
So you want the people that have bought the service from the website to be able to use the app, exactly like if they had purchased it from in App Purchases and in App Purchases people to be able to join the service just like people that joined through the site? As far as I know, Apple doesn't allow you to pay through other services as you said, but let's say someone buys the service from the app. What should happen would be that the money will be transferred to the company. Then after the payment you should include some code doing what the site does after a new person has payed for the service, so create his account as a paid account. Then, the app should also have a login screen where the registered users (no matter where they registered from) will be able to login into the app and use the service. Now the problem is indeed that if the subscription is stopped through iTunes you would never know, though a way around this would be to make a check in the server of this company which should monitor the income coming from one account. Then if this user has stopped paying (or stopped the subscription) you would be able to stop the service from the app. And you should recheck the server for payment after the duration of the subscription has passed, let's say a weekly subscription should be checked every week. (Sorry I would do this a comment but I haven't got enough reputation for this)
I'm implementing an iOS app with non-renewing subscription. Not much relevant information was available online; so I seek your guidance.
A use case which worries me the most is when a user purchased the subscription once and then immediately after purchase it again to extend the duration of service (see such scenario here). What if that user were to refund the first purchase, leaving the second one intact? Is this even possible in practice, or am I just too paranoid?
Assuming the above case is possible, my app will run into a problem because, as far as I know, verifyReceipt only returns the latest, good receipt (watch Managing Subscriptions with In-App Purchase in WWDC'12).
I find nowhere Apple provides relevant information about refunding policies.
(Auto-renewable subscription seems to rule out this case as a renewing action is taken care by iTunes automagically and it seems not possible to extend this type of subscription until iTunes allows it.)
verifyReceipt will not only return the latest good receipt, it will also tell you if the receipt you submitted for verification is good. So if you're concerned that a user may have cancelled* a transaction, then submit every receipt you're questioning.
*But what do you mean by "cancel" the first purchase? Do you mean when they tap "cancel" instead of "buy?" Well then the transaction won't go through and you won't even get a receipt.
Or do you mean when they request a refund? I don't know any other way they can cancel a purchase.
Edit:
If you're referring to refunds, there's no way for a developer to tell if a user has been issued a refund. The assumption is that Apple expects you to continue to deliver services to that user regardless of the fact that they received a refund. Your receipts will probably all verify correctly regardless of the status of a refund.
I'm having in-app purchase subscriptions in my app. I'm able to integrate and make subscriptions successfully. There are 3 different subscriptions, monthly, quarter and yearly.
So if user subscribes to monthly user can use that feature for 30 days. There's no server in my case. Only availability of some features will be activated/deactivated according to subscription.
When ever the app starts, i want to check whether user paid for subscription or not. If I'm maintaining some bool value in subscriptions, what if the user has deactivated the subscriptions from settings? How can I detect whether the subscriptions are valid or not?
You can add counter and add that counter value in a database that must be inside your app. Whenever user tries to access subscriptions you can verify from the database.
You have to post the receipt back to apple server and from the response we receive, we can identify the expiry date. Then I'll know whether the subscription is expired or renewed etc.
Visit Apple documentation