How to handle subscription repurchase scenario in android in-app purchase?

Question

I am maintaining and updating the subscription state through the real time developer notification. When an user purchased a subscription in app, my server is called to link the purchase with the user.

Whenever user repurchases a subscription after expiry, I get a notification from Google pub-sub in my server as a "SUBSCRIPTION_PURCHASED" notification. I just don't know to which user I have to link this purchase? Since the repurchase is happening from the play store and it has no link with the app, I am unable to register the subscription to the user. Kindly please help me.

Answer 1

Just to clarify the different cases, even if I know that's not what you're asking for here :

• whenever a subscription expires on the Play Store because of a payment issue, it enters in a grace period (if you havent deactivated this feature). If the payment method is not fixed, the subscription enters into an "account hold" period (30 days) where any payment method resolution or re-subscription will bring back the subscription. In this case, you'll receive a SUBSCRIPTION_RECOVERED S2S notification with the purchaseToken known by your server and everything should work just fine (more on this here: https://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/subscriptions#account-hold)
• in your case, the user has re-purchased the subscription in another context than an "account hold", that's why you'll have an unknown purchaseToken and you won't be able to associate the subscription with any user. I'm afraid in this case, you can't do much.

The only solution for your user is to "restore" his subscription within your app. In another words, you should add a link in your Paywall which, when clicked, will retrieve the subscription from the Play Store and send them back to your server (like for a normal purchase). Your server will detect the new subscription and will linked the subscription to the correct user.

Here is an example of a Paywall with this restore link:

You could thought that it would be a good idea to always look in the Play Store for subscriptions when your app launch... and whenever your detect a subscription that isn't attached to your user, send the receipt to your server to attach the subscription to your user. It would be an error though since a same device can be used by 2 persons and one user would "steal" the subscription from the other.