In app purchase not working after publishing iOS app to App Store

Question

During development I've created test accounts which are able to obtain the price of the in app purchase as well as actually purchasing it without an issue. However after publishing the iOS app to App Store, the version of the app in App store can't even retrieve price of the product, and nothing shows up when I press the button to send the purchase request.

Uninstalling the app and redeploy the development version to the same device got it to work again.

What could be the problem? Is there a way to debug or see logs on the app store downloaded version? (iOS noob here)

Thanks!

Answer 1

I had the same problem. The app was approved but in-app purchases were not working. After 24-48 of app publishing problem was fixed by its own. By the time app approved it was not appearing on App Store through search. After it was indexed on App Store in-apps started to work also.

Answer 2

It takes a little time even when everything is approved.

• My binary was approved.
• My In-App Purchase (IAP) was approved.
• Testing the purchase in development with a sandbox iTunes Account worked great.
• Purchasing in production with a real or sandbox iTunes Account would fail.

I didn't have to wait long, something like a couple hours and it just started working.

Now, my binary and my In-App Purhcase were approved at the same time and almost immediately after they were both approved, I released the app version to the store.

I'm not positive, but what I probably should have done was wait a couple hours before releasing that new app version and give the In-App Purchase a chance to "register" or "propagate" in the Production App Store.

Just a recommendation for others.

Answer 3

It takes some time, but the amount isn't predictable. In my case, I launched 3 very similar apps at the same time , so just add some data on this :

• Everything was approved, the apps were quickly available on the App Store.
• It took about 4 hours for 2 of the apps to show up in search results.
• After 6 hours, IAPs started progressively showing up (not all at once) for these
• After 9 hours, IAPs for the two apps were complete.
• After 12 hours, IAPs for the last app started appearing, but the last app itself still wasn't showing up in search results.
• After 14 hours, the last app appeared in search results.

The order in which I hit the "Publish" button didn't seem to have any influence, nor the number of IAPs, weight of the app, etc. So delays are unpredictable and do not follow a specific rule ("First-in, first-out" or "search results and then IAP")

Answer 4

I found this Apple Tech note , which is includes follow:

Q. App Review has recently approved my application, but my In-App Purchase identifiers in the production version of the application are being returned in the invalidProductIdentifiers array.

A. When an application is approved, the developer must also approve the application for release to the App Store. On approval, the application ID is activated to the App Store. The same activation is required for the in-app purchase identifiers and can only take place once the application is activated. In some cases, the activation of the In-App Purchase identifiers may lag up to 48 hours following the activation of the application.

If the developer does not approve the release of the production application to the App Store, then any new in-app purchase identifiers will not be activated. This is an issue when a developer wants to verify the application prior to activating it on the App Store. If the desire is to test the in-app purchase process for the new items, the application must be activated to the App Store. This is only an issue for new in-app purchase identifiers in a corresponding application submission. Once these in-app purchase identifiers have been activated, application updates to the submission will find that these in-app purchase identifiers are validated, even if the update is not activated.

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But in my case it takes even further, about 52 hours.

Answer 5

I found that doing a simple edit of the description in each IAP helps. Just make an edit, save it, revert to the original and save again. It took up to 8 hours for it to propagate across Apple servers. IAP's I didn't do this to had no change.