40-45% Billing Error

Hi did you get any more clarity? We are seeing 70% billing failure from trial to paid. It doesn’t make any sense. 

I’ve been looking into this error for a long time. High billing error rates is normal. We get over 60% billing errors from free trials on android. There is not much you can do about it. It’s on Apple and Google end. 

Only thing you do really do is set a long enough grace period may help get a few recovered. Or get rid of free trial. Another thing you can test is $1 trial so you know their card works before giving access.

I'm from Brazil and I created an application, we offered 7 days of testing for users and after that, we had a large volume of "pending payments" and "billing issue" did you experience this too?

I had 35 subscriptions and only 5 converted.

Did you manage to solve it?

As of last week we are observing a very high rate of BILLING_ERROR webhook calls. Not sure if that’s related to the new sandbox billing features announced by Apple on Apr 19. Any insights, @Ryan Glanz ?

Hey @Ryan Glanz!

Thank for getting back to me. Yep, I understand that a 30-40% conversion from start trial to paying is quite normal, but is it normal to have such a high billing error rate? 

For clarification these users are not cancelling, they are going into the billing error grace period because there is something wrong with their payment method. 

I know this happens, but it probably shouldn't be happening at such a high rate. 

We are also 100% IOS and based in the US.

Let me know if any other ideas come to mind.

Thanks! 

Hi,

Yeah, that’s pretty common. We have a recent report out that found that 38% of users who start a trial end up becoming subscribers. So that number of failed purchases isn’t uncommon.

It can get especially high on Android because some users/countries aren’t required to submit a payment method before signing up for a trial.