Missing INITIAL_BUY notification for a single user (App Store Server Notification V2)

Question

Kosuke-dev OP

Created 4d

Replies 2

Boosts 0

Participants 2

Hi all,

We’re implementing in-app subscriptions in our iOS app using App Store Server Notifications V2 in the production environment.

Everything is generally working well — we receive notifications such as DID_CHANGE_RENEWAL_STATUS, CANCELLATION, etc., and we log all incoming notifications into our own database.

However, we've encountered a single case where the INITIAL_BUY notification was not received for a specific user.
Interestingly, we did receive the later notifications (DID_CHANGE_RENEWAL_STATUS and CANCELLATION) for that same user.

Here is our setup:

App Store Server Notifications V2
Notification endpoint is stable and functioning normally (receives and logs other notifications)
Notifications are reliably stored in our database
The issue occurred only once for one user
Environment: Production

We've already contacted Apple Developer Support, but were informed that this issue is out of scope for direct support, and were directed to the Developer Forums.

Our questions:

Under what conditions might the INITIAL_BUY notification fail to be sent or delivered?
Is there any known behavior or scenario where Apple may skip the INITIAL_BUY notification?
Any recommendations on how to further investigate or verify whether it was sent from Apple’s side?

We’ve confirmed that the notification never hit our server (no logs, no DB record), and our system was healthy at the time.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Boost

Answer 1

App Store Commerce Engineer OP

Apple

3d

Hello -

There are no known conditions or scenarios where the server notification for the initial In-App Purchase of a new subscription (with notificationType=SUBSCRIBED and subtype=INITIAL_BUY) would not be sent.

Since it sounds like you missed only one such notification (and presumably successfully received many other INITIAL_BUY notifications), ensure that your server is responding to the notifications as documented here: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appstoreservernotifications/responding-to-app-store-server-notifications. Retry notifications are sent as documented on that page.

Use the "Get Notification History" endpoint to verify that a specific server notification was sent for a given Transaction ID: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appstoreserverapi/get-notification-history.

If you cannot find an expected notification using the endpoint above, please reply back with more details - including the Transaction ID(s) and date(s) - and we will investigate further.

Thank you.

0

Answer 2

Kosuke-dev OP

3d

Subject: Follow-up on missing INITIAL_BUY notification (transactionId: XXX)

Hi, thank you very much for your support.

I’m following up regarding the missing INITIAL_BUY notification we encountered.

We attempted to use the Get Notification History API to verify whether the notification was sent for the relevant transactionId.
However, the transaction took place more than 180 days ago, so the API does not return any data for that time range.

We’ve also double-checked our server logs and found no record of receiving a SUBSCRIBED notification with subtype=INITIAL_BUY.
That said, we did receive subsequent notifications (such as DID_CHANGE_RENEWAL_STATUS and CANCELLATION) for the same user, and also received INITIAL_BUY notifications for other users without any issues.
Our system appears to have been fully operational at the time and was likely processing all other notifications correctly.

If there's any other way to confirm whether this notification was sent — or if you're able to check on your end — we would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks again for your assistance!

0