By StoreKit or Original API we now mean StoreKit 2 and while some argue that StoreKit 1 is not going anywhere, it still is a big deal since it won’t be available in iOS18 and above. So what’s new in StoreKit for subscription apps?
1. Enhanced Transaction History
Finished Consumable Transactions: With iOS 18, finished consumable transactions are now included in the transaction history APIs. This means you no longer need to manually track these transactions. Simply set the SKIncludeConsumableInAppPurchaseHistory key to true in your info.plist, and you're good to go.
Additional Transaction Data: New fields like currency and price in the Transaction and RenewalInfo models provide detailed purchase information, helping you better understand your customers' transactions.
Win-Back offers are designed to recover churned subscribers and re-engage users who’ve stopped using the premium features of your app. Now you can customize eligibility rules in App Store Connect and promote these win-back offers using the StoreKit Message API without any additional coding. Learn more about implementing win-back offers here.
Apple’s merchandising UI offers more flexibility and customization options in the way you present and organize your in-app purchases:
SubscriptionStoreView Customizations: New ways to customize your subscription store view allow you to use subscription option groups to present different service levels clearly. You can add custom marketing content with ease to make your subscription store more engaging.
Control Styles and Placement: The new compact picker and paged picker styles help reduce vertical space usage. You can now place controls in various locations within the subscription store to optimize user interaction.
New StoreKit view styles offer both pre-built and customizable options to enhance the user experience. The three new control styles CompactPicker, PagedPicker, and PagedProminentPicker enable you to create a more intuitive subscription store layout.
You can as well build your custom control styles using StoreKit’s primitives, giving you full creative control over your subscription store’s appearance.
This year, testing app behavior in Xcode became much more powerful, here are the key news:
Local Testing of App Policies: You can now test your app’s privacy policy and license agreement locally with new settings in Xcode 16.
Localized Subscription Group Names: Add and test localized display names for your subscription groups.
Win-Back Offers Configuration: Easily add and test win-back offers in your StoreKit configuration.
In-App Purchase Images: Test in-app purchase images directly within your testing configuration.
Billing Issue Messages: Test how your app handles billing issues directly in Xcode to ensure a smooth user experience.
The App Store server API now offers 12 endpoints, replacing the deprecated Verify Receipt endpoint. These include endpoints for transaction information, refunds, and App Store Server Notifications.
The real-time notifications inform your server about transaction updates like upgrades, renewals, and refunds. The new ONE_TIME_CHARGE notification is particularly useful for tracking one-time purchases, including non-consumable, consumable, and non-renewing subscriptions.
According to Apple, though, the preferable way to work with the App Store Server API is the App Store Server Library that was introduced during the last WWDC to simplify integration; it now supports Java, Python, Node.js, and Swift, and is open source, allowing you to contribute and provide feedback.
There’s also an updated Consumption Request Workflow that lets you handle the consumption requests with the library to participate in the refund decisioning process.
And there’s a detailed Purchase Lifecycle Management that allows you to track your refunds. With CONSUMPTION_REQUEST notifications you can see the ConsumptionRequestReason field, indicating the customer's reason for a refund. And you can submit a preference for granting or denying the refund when calling the Send Consumption Information endpoint to streamline the refund process.
According to content delivery best practices by Apple, the server is the only source of truth for customer entitlements and granted content. Qonversion is this source of truth for thousands of apps: we streamline subscription data, prevent issues from modified or unsigned data on devices, and give you all the tools to manage customer access and granted content. On top of that you get tools to do A/B tests in your app, get in-depth analytics, and remotely configure your app behavior. Talk to us to see how Qonversion can help your app grow.
