The store’s automated effort to collect a subscription renewal after the scheduled payment method fails.
Billing retry is a recovery process, not one universal entitlement state. Google Play and Apple may attempt a failed renewal again, notify the customer, and expose changing lifecycle evidence to the app’s backend. During part of the process the subscriber can remain entitled through grace; later attempts may continue after access has been suspended. Treating every retrying account as active—or every failed charge as immediately expired—causes incorrect access decisions.
On Google Play, payment recovery can include a grace period followed by account hold. RTDN announces transitions such as SUBSCRIPTION_IN_GRACE_PERIOD, SUBSCRIPTION_ON_HOLD, SUBSCRIPTION_RECOVERED, cancellation, and expiration. The handler uses the notification’s token to call subscriptionsv2 and applies the returned subscriptionState. Grace retains entitlement; hold does not. Recovery from grace preserves the original renewal date, while recovery from hold resets it.
Apple’s Billing Grace Period is an optional entitled window within billing recovery. App Store Connect currently offers 3, 16, or 28 days, with shorter effective limits for weekly subscriptions. Billing retry can continue after grace ends, when paid service is no longer owed. StoreKit renewal information and App Store Server Notifications provide the evidence needed to distinguish those conditions. Apple’s reporting describes longer recovery activity separately from grace, so the two names should not be used as synonyms.
Persist each store event idempotently, fetch or verify authoritative state, and compute entitlement from that result. Customer messages can explain a payment issue and link to the platform’s billing-management surface without collecting card details in the app. Track recovery rate by entry state and time, but avoid promising the schedule of individual retry attempts. Tests should cover success inside grace, transition to suspended access, late recovery, final expiration, duplicate notifications, and an event delivered out of order.
The entitled portion of payment recovery after renewal failure.
Play’s suspended recovery phase after grace has ended.
The recurring charge that retry is attempting to complete.
Use notifications plus current store state for every entitlement transition.
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