Hi
We have an app with subscriptions sold using RevenueCat.
When a child in a Google Family Plan try to purchase the subscription they see an “Ask your parent” popup, which I assume RevenueCat is showing?
We have 4 parents who cannot find a way to authorise the subscription.
Is there something we need to do in RevenueCat or on Google Play to enable them to authorise the subscription?
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Hey
All pop ups that you see in the app come directly from the app stores themselves and not RevenueCat. You can send the parents this link from Google’s help center to approve the request: https://support.google.com/families/answer/7039872?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&oco=1#zippy=
Hi
Sadly we’ve not managed to get anywhere with this.
We’ve had about 10 customers report the issue but none have been able to find a way around it and I’ve spent hours researching it and trying things. Even disabling family link doesn’t help. From what I can tell, a child can’t buy a Subscription on a family-linked app.
Would be great to hear if you manage to solve this.
befinch.com looks cool btw, congrats!
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hi
+6
Thx
There’s a simpler work-around. Add a one time yearly subscription as in “2022 subscription” while this is inferior to subscription - it will allow us users to use the app.
Thanks
Does this work for subscription products, do you know? I’ve got a few people who are used to authorising apps for their kids but they say ours just doesn’t work. It used to work before we switched from up-front payments to subscriptions.
- When a family member makes a purchase, they'll see a screen that asks for your password.
- Review the request.
- To approve it, enter your Google Account password on their device.
- Click Approve.
This is what the link you sent advises for paid products. Problem is, our customers are not being shown the password popup. Instead, just a popup that says “Ask your parent”.
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Hey!
Has the parent attempted to follow the “See all pending requests for free content” for any approval requests as well? I’ve been searching for developer facing docs in the Play Store docs, but haven’t had any luck. I found this issue that another person posted in Google’s Play Help Center, does the screenshot look like what your customers are seeing?
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We have a similar problem where a parent is unable to start a free trial on their daughter’s phone that is managed by Family Link. The parent disabled the requirement for needing approval for their daughter but is still getting blocked by the modal below. Curious if there’s any new information or suggestions for Family link subscriptions?
Kids will be an increasingly larger audience for our product so this is particularly important for us.
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We looked into this some more and found a similar finding from google support docs that Family Payments generally isn’t allowed to be used for subscription purchases: https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/6294544?hl=en#zippy=%2Cpurchases-you-can-use-the-family-payment-method-for%2Cpurchases-you-cant-use-the-family-payment-method-for
We don’t fully understand how Family Link works yet but it sounds like it’s really official that Families can purchase consumables but not subscriptions 🤦♀️. Not sure what is a good workaround for this though.
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hi
Hi
Sorry for the delay.
We never found a workaround on Google Play.
The parents aren’t happy about it because it worked before we introduced subscriptions. We had to apologise and told them we were working on a workaround. Not great at all.
We eventually found a workaround, which is basically to grant entitlements to individual users using RevenueCat. You can do this directly from RevenueCat by finding a customer and then selecting the entitlement and granting to a customer. You have to know know the user ID (which we get from a support email generated by the app).
What about you? Did you find a way forward?
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Thanks for the tip
As I understand the user (the child) must create the support email after trying to subscribe?
Generally this is a problem which also occurs at google otherwise? Without revenuecat? Does anyone know?
The only workaround I have is to offer an additional Inapp purchase. A one time amount for lifetime.
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