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Ask to Buy on iOS

  • March 29, 2026
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Hey folks - hope you’re well. Wondering if anyone else has run into the issue where apparently the app is giving the ask to buy modal to the user but the parent never receives the notification? From what the parent tells me: other apps seem to notify them just fine so doesn’t appear to be an ios version mismatch.

As far as I understand holding the payment is the correct step but unsure if in-app purchases (not subscriptions) need a specific set up in app store connect to get this to work? Unsure if I’m missing something obvious here 

Thanks!

Best answer by guilherme

Hey ​@budgefrownie - there’s no special App Store Connect setup is needed for “Ask to Buy” to work with non-subscription IAPs. It's the same flow regardless of product type.

The parent not receiving the notification seems to point to a device/settings issue directly, not something RevenueCat or your app controls. It might be worth having the parent check their App Store notification settings and confirm Family Sharing is set up correctly there too!

One thing worth double-checking on your end though, how are you handling the pending state when Ask to Buy is triggered? When a child initiates a purchase, it returns a PAYMENT_PENDING_ERROR rather than completing. A common mishap here is treating that as a hard failure and showing an error dialog, so it might be worth sanity-checking this too, just in case, and show a "your payment is pending approval, you'll get access once it's approved."

Then listen for CustomerInfo updates so the entitlement activates automatically when the parent approves, without the user needing to do anything.

More context on error handling here!

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2 replies

guilherme
RevenueCat Staff
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  • guilherme
  • RevenueCat Staff
  • Answer
  • April 1, 2026

Hey ​@budgefrownie - there’s no special App Store Connect setup is needed for “Ask to Buy” to work with non-subscription IAPs. It's the same flow regardless of product type.

The parent not receiving the notification seems to point to a device/settings issue directly, not something RevenueCat or your app controls. It might be worth having the parent check their App Store notification settings and confirm Family Sharing is set up correctly there too!

One thing worth double-checking on your end though, how are you handling the pending state when Ask to Buy is triggered? When a child initiates a purchase, it returns a PAYMENT_PENDING_ERROR rather than completing. A common mishap here is treating that as a hard failure and showing an error dialog, so it might be worth sanity-checking this too, just in case, and show a "your payment is pending approval, you'll get access once it's approved."

Then listen for CustomerInfo updates so the entitlement activates automatically when the parent approves, without the user needing to do anything.

More context on error handling here!

Gui, Developer Support Engineer @ RevenueCat
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  • budgefrownie
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  • April 2, 2026

Amazing thanks! We’re definitely catching the `payment_pending_error` as the child got the dedicated modal while in transit informing them to wait but I will look into the listening for customer info part as well 

Thanks for the docs will read into it and the sanity check I wasn’t doing something completely unheard of! 

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