we want to launch a new app with subscriptions. our first 2 reviews were rejected because these subscriptions were through stripe. The review told us that we should make part of our app available for free. However we would like to keep our existing business model. Can we solve this by removing stripe and switching to in-app purchases from apple? We want to put our entire app behind a pay wall but allow the user to learn all the features through a 7 day trial period. thanks for your advice
Subscriptions
RSS for tagGive users access to content, services, or premium features in your app on an ongoing basis with subscriptions, a type of in-app purchase.
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I'm using the SwiftUI view SubscriptionStoreView (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/subscriptionstoreview/) with a subscription group that has 2 subscriptions. I set up a free trial offer in App Store Connect (https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect/manage-subscriptions/set-up-introductory-offers-for-auto-renewable-subscriptions/). The storekit file in Xcode is synced with the App Store.
In debug build, this works and appears correctly, showing the free trial offer:
But in release build, the free trial offer is not shown:
The code is very simple:
SubscriptionStoreView(productIDs: [
"[PRODUCT ID FOR ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION]",
"[PRODUCT ID FOR BIMONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION]"
])
Does anyone have a solution? Thank you.
(Xcode 16.3, macOS 15.5, iOS 18.5)
Hello,
New app with a simple subscription is being rejected in review, apparently because the subscription's IAP products are unavailable in the review environment. Subscription purchases work correctly in TestFlight.
The only description of the problem supplied by the reviewer is "Specifically, error processing IAPs" – no screenshots or description of symptoms. However I can see from app diagnostics they are getting the log error "Subscription store should include at least one auto-renewable subscription", which implies the products cannot be loaded.
There is nothing I can change at my end to resolve this. Please help. This seems to be a regular problem, reading this forum.
FYI:
Subscriptions work in TestFlight using the sandbox
Subscription products were attached to the app version for review
Subscription products have status "Waiting for review"
The paid agreement is active and bank information is present
I have also deleted and re-created the products with new group and product ids after a previous similar rejection. The submitted build uses these new products of course.
Topic:
App Store Distribution & Marketing
SubTopic:
App Review
Tags:
Subscriptions
App Review
StoreKit
We're planning on increasing the price of our ios in-app subscription. We will select the option "Keep the current price for existing subscribers"
Reading this https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect/manage-subscriptions/manage-pricing-for-auto-renewable-subscriptions/, it's not clear if existing subscribers will be notified of the change in pricing (even though that change won't impact them) or not?
Topic:
App & System Services
SubTopic:
StoreKit
Tags:
Subscriptions
App Store
StoreKit
In-App Purchase
We offer a 3-day free trial, and our paywall clearly states that users will be charged after the trial ends.
However, some users request refunds after the charge - even after fully using our app for days or even weeks. In some cases, refunds are approved despite the users having consumed our AI processing services for up to a month.
Since our app relies on backend AI processing, each user session incurs a real cost. To prevent losses, we utilize RevenueCat’s CONSUMPTION_REQUEST system and have set our refundPreference to: "2. You prefer that Apple declines the refund".
Until recently, Apple typically respected this preference, and 90% of refund requests were declined as intended.
However, starting about a week ago, we observed a sudden reversal: Apple is now approving around 90% of refund requests, despite our refund preference. As a result, we are operating at a loss and have had to halt both our marketing campaigns and our 3-day free trial.
We’re trying to understand whether this shift is due to a change in Apple’s refund policy, or if we need to handle CONSUMPTION_REQUEST differently on our end.
Has anyone else experienced similar changes? Any insights would be greatly appreciated.
Topic:
App & System Services
SubTopic:
StoreKit
Tags:
Subscriptions
StoreKit
App Store Server Notifications
App Store Server Library
Hello
We submitted our app for the first time about a week ago. Then there was the usual back-and-forth between Review and us, things we did not think of when submitting the app. One of those things was that our subscriptions were not being submitted together with the app.
So we did that and submitted it again, and both the app and the subscriptions went into status "Waiting for Review".
Then the app was rejected again for some other reason that had nothing to do with the subscriptions. But the subscriptions stayed at status "Waiting for Review" - and in that status, they cannot be added again to review. So we thought, maybe the subscriptions are still in review, so we do not need to add them again explicitly.
But now the app gets rejected because we didn't include the subscriptions in the submission.
I submitted the app again and added a comment about the situation. Now both the app and the subscriptions are in "Waiting for Review".
What can we do? Any way to get the subscriptions back to "Ready for Review", so they can be added again?
Thanks
Jonas
Topic:
App Store Distribution & Marketing
SubTopic:
App Review
Tags:
Subscriptions
App Store Connect
In-App Purchase
Hello!
The localization isn't working when using SubscriptionStoreView. The app hasn't been published yet. The subscription has been created and localization strings have been added. Status - ready to submit.
Testing environment: Sandbox
When calling SubscriptionStoreView, the debug console shows this error:
GenerativeModelsAvailability.Parameters: Initialized with invalid language code: ru-RU. Expected to receive two-letter ISO 639 code. e.g. 'zh' or 'en'. Falling back to: ru
Despite this, the subscription interface appears in English when Russian is expected.
I don't use any locale setting for ru-RU anywhere in my code. The test device's region is set to Russia, and the language is Russian.
Any help would be appreciated.
Dear Apple Developer Support,
Our iOS application offers subscriptions with a free trial period. We understand that in South Korea, due to local subscription regulations, users must explicitly provide consent for recurring payments before the subscription converts from a free trial to a paid period.
We have the following questions regarding how StoreKit handles this scenario:
When a free trial is about to convert to a paid subscription for a user in South Korea, does StoreKit send a StoreKit.Message (or SKStorefront.Message) to the application to obtain the required consent for recurring payments?
If such a message is sent, would the Reason for this message be StoreKit.Message.Reason.priceIncreaseConsent, or would it be another specific reason related to initial recurring payment consent after a trial?
If our application receives such a message and we choose to defer its display, what is the maximum recommended or permissible deferral period?
Is it possible to save the data of a received StoreKit.Message and display it to the user at a later time, for instance, after the application has been closed and subsequently reopened? Are there any best practices or limitations regarding this?
We need this information to ensure our application correctly handles these consent requirements in compliance with South Korean policies and provides a smooth user experience.
Thank you for your guidance.
We are a group of 10 friends using the same device and Apple ID, but each of us has a different account within the same app. We want to purchase the same auto-renewable monthly subscription plan, each using our own app credentials.
The issue: after the first person subscribes, the next user (with a different in-app account) is unable to buy the same plan—it shows "already subscribed" and only allows access after the next billing cycle.
We don’t mind the auto-renewal being charged each month by a different person. We just want each app account to have access to the same package independently, for 1 month each.
How can we achieve this without changing the Apple ID or device?
Topic:
Developer Tools & Services
SubTopic:
Apple Developer Program
Tags:
Subscriptions
App Store Connect
In-App Purchase
Hi guys,
We are trying to implement a solution that would allow users to subscribe to other users in our app. The system should work the same way as Twitch's subscription model works. Users should be able to subscribe to anyone and each subscription should have different tiers.
From what we were able to gather, users cannot have multiples of the same subscription on applestoreconnect. Meaning that we would probably need to make a custom subscription per every user? Here we have also learned that there is a limit of 10 000 types of subscriptions and that it is not possible to dynamically create/delete them for users. (correct me if I am wrong)
Is there a solution for handling this type of a scenario?
Appreciate all answers.
Hello,
We have been approved for the Advanced commerce API and we are trying to implement dynamically created subscriptions via the SubscriptionCreateRequest.
We followed the Sending Advanced Commerce API requests from your app (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/sending-advanced-commerce-api-requests-from-your-app) documentation but we are not able to make it work correctly.
We created a generic subscription in the Appstore connect, product ID: com.example.subscription
Then in the app we load the subscription:
try await Product.products(for: ["com.example.subscription"])
We do the JWS serialization on our backend and then we wrap the jwt and convert it to Data in the app as this:
let request = """
{
"signatureInfo": {
"token": "\(result.signedPayload)"
}
}
"""
let advancedCommerceRequestData = Data(request.utf8)
Lastly, we apply the purchase options on the generic product as this:
try await product.purchase(
options: [
Product.PurchaseOption.custom(
key: "advancedCommerceData",
value: advancedCommerceRequestData
)
]
)
It doesn't show any error, but on the payment sheet it shows the data from the generic subscription and not the data that was in the SubscriptionCreateRequest.
Here is an example of the generated jwt:
eyJraWQiOiI4V0tNQjhLWTI0IiwidHlwIjoiSldUIiwiYWxnIjoiRVMyNTYifQ.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.kJ0f_q2A11Mn9OBmvX6SRmtW5P--volFTVcq_Gohs3N51ECfZqS3WHOxOZc7aojq_qiUHGFp_evmHP51f3LzSw
Topic:
App & System Services
SubTopic:
StoreKit
Tags:
Subscriptions
StoreKit
In-App Purchase
Advanced Commerce API
Hello! I am trying to get my app set up to support external payments. The snag I am hitting at the moment is it seems that relevant pages are not accessible?
There is this old EU doc
https://developer.apple.com/support/apps-using-alternative-payment-providers-in-the-eu/
But the more updated US doc titled "Distributing apps in the U.S. that provide an external purchase link - Support" is not available where it should be https://developer.apple.com/support/storekit-external-entitlement-us/
In addition the link for requesting the entitlement seems to be broken
https://developer.apple.com/contact/request/storekit-external-entitlement-us/
Any idea how one can access these? Perhaps this is just a temporary error?
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appstoreservernotifications/app-store-server-notifications-changelog#June-10-2024
ONE_TIME_CHARGE notify type running in a sandbox environment for almost a year, the feature is not yet available for production environment.
The notification is already available in Google subscriptions.
Our services often miss orders because of the absence of this notification.
Can you give us an approximate time range?
Topic:
Community
SubTopic:
Apple Developers
Tags:
Subscriptions
In-App Purchase
App Store Server Notifications
App Store Server API
We’ve recently encountered an increased rate of purchase errors StoreKit.InvalidRequestError error 1 (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/invalidrequesterror) specifically on iOS 18.4.
We suspect this might be related to the new Advanced Commerce API introduced by Apple, although we haven’t made any changes related to this API in our app.
Have you experienced similar issues since the release of iOS 18.4 or when integrating the Advanced Commerce API? Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Topic:
App & System Services
SubTopic:
StoreKit
Tags:
Subscriptions
StoreKit
In-App Purchase
Advanced Commerce API
Since last week while testing our in-app purchases with a sandbox account, I often wait for a minute or longer to receive any feedback from the app store. This is the case within the app but also in the developer settings -> sandbox account -> subscriptions.
My task is to implement subscription management with a third party server. This sadly prevents me from using StoreKit2 and the transaction manager within XCode, which I've enjoyed in the past. Testing with sandbox accounts is extremely frustrating due to these problems.
Other posts on this forum have highlighted similar issues so I want to ask: what is the cause and when can we expect a stable version again?
I've recently published an app, and while developing it, I could always get consistent entitlements from Transaction.currentEntitlements. But now I see some inconsistent behaviour for a subscribed device in the AppStore version. It looks like sometimes the entitlements do not emit value for the subscriptions.
It usually happens on the first couple tries when the device goes offline, or on the first couple tries when the device goes online. But it also happens randomly at other times as well.
Can there be a problem with Transaction.currentEntitlements when the connectivity was just changed?
Of course my implementation may also be broken. I will give you the details of my implementation below.
I have a SubscriptionManager that is observable (irrelevant parts of the entity is omitted):
final class SubscriptionManager: NSObject, ObservableObject {
private let productIds = ["yearly", "monthly"]
private(set) var purchasedProductIDs = Set<String>()
var hasUnlockedPro: Bool {
return !self.purchasedProductIDs.isEmpty
}
@MainActor
func updatePurchasedProducts() async {
var purchasedProductIDs = Set<String>()
for await result in Transaction.currentEntitlements {
guard case .verified(let transaction) = result else {
continue
}
if transaction.revocationDate == nil {
purchasedProductIDs.insert(transaction.productID)
} else {
purchasedProductIDs.remove(transaction.productID)
}
}
// only update if changed to avoid unnecessary published triggers
if purchasedProductIDs != self.purchasedProductIDs {
self.purchasedProductIDs = purchasedProductIDs
}
}
}
And I call the updatePurchasedProducts() when the app first launches in AppDelegate, before returning true on didFinishLaunchingWithOptions as:
Task(priority: .high) {
await DependencyContainer.shared.subscriptionManager.updatePurchasedProducts()
}
You may be wondering maybe the request is not finished yet and I fail to refresh my UI, but it is not the case. Because later on, every time I do something related to a subscribed content, I check the hasUnlockedPro computed property of the subscription manager, which still returns false, meaning the purchasedProductIDs is empty.
You may also be curious about the dependency container approach, but I ensured by testing multiple times that there is only one instance of the SubscriptionManager at all times in the app.
Which makes me think maybe there is something wrong with Transaction.currentEntitlements
I would appreciate any help regarding this problem, or would like to know if anyone else experienced similar problems.
I'm using TestFlight to test an app with payment/subscription functionality. I created sandbox accounts in AppStore Connect accordingly to be able to test the subscriptions. I'm logged in with the sandbox account.
When I try to subscribe in the App the wrong account (this is my actual real AppleID) is used for the subscription although it is recognized that this is just a sandbox subscription.
I tried:
logging off/on into the sandbox account
creating a totally new sandbox account
trying to trigger the payment with no logged in sandbox account
The result is always: in the payment popup it is stated that the purchase account will be my original AppleID and not a sandbox account.
How can I switch the accounts? Is this a bug at Apple's side somehow?
Topic:
App & System Services
SubTopic:
StoreKit
Tags:
Subscriptions
TestFlight
In-App Purchase
StoreKit
The sample code provided in https://developer.apple.com/wwdc21/10114 doesn't appear to call finish() on unverified transactions, and I haven't been able to find any documentation regarding what to do with unfinished transactions. However, Apple has always emphasized the importance of finishing transactions, and since a transaction object is provided even with the unverified state, I'd love some guidance!
Hi! I’m new in programming apps for Apple Store and I’m creating my first app. I already send my for review but I get an answer of problems with the subs flow. If there’s anyone who can help me fix this problem and implement my subscriptions in my app and test it out I would be thankful, I want the flow work like in the image!
Hello,
I am attempting to enroll in the Apple Developer Program and have already added $100 to my Apple account. However, every time I try to proceed with the enrollment, I encounter an error.
I have reached out to Apple Support multiple times, but the issue remains unresolved. Each time, the case is escalated to a senior representative, yet no clear solution has been provided. It feels as though the issue is being passed back and forth without accountability.
Furthermore, I’m receiving conflicting guidance—Apple.com refers me to developer.apple.com, and vice versa—leaving me stuck without a resolution.
I would appreciate your urgent assistance in identifying and resolving this issue so I can complete my enrollment.
Best regards,
Gulf Now
Topic:
Developer Tools & Services
SubTopic:
Apple Developer Program
Tags:
Subscriptions
Accounts
App Store
App Store Connect