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Google Play: 13 of 13 free-trial conversions failing with billing error since late August (Flutter)

  • September 21, 2026
  • 1 reply
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Hi all,

I'm hoping someone, ideally from the RevenueCat team, can help me work out where this is breaking. Every paid conversion on our Android app has failed for three weeks, and Google Play support hasn't been able to explain it.

Setup

  • Flutter app, purchases_flutter 10.0.2, default configuration (RevenueCat completes and acknowledges purchases), Google Play Billing via RevenueCat
  • Two base plans (monthly and annual), both with a 7-day free trial
  • Grace periods and account hold enabled; base plans active in all markets with regional pricing
  • Service account credentials valid and RTDN flowing (events arrive in RevenueCat as expected)

What's happening

Only one trial conversion has ever succeeded, on 28 August. All 13 since then have failed. Trial starts process normally at zero. Seven days later the renewal order appears in Play Console as Pending, then goes to Canceled with the total zeroed. None show as Declined.

In RevenueCat, a typical chain is: trial started → subscription extended (24h payment retry) → grace period entered with billing error → cancelled with billing error. Auto-renew is on throughout. In one case the order went from Pending to Canceled after three days, with no retries shown.

It spans the US, UK, Mexico, Colombia and Paraguay, both plans, and six price points. There's also one failure on iOS.

What I've ruled out or checked

  • Config: grace periods, account hold, base plans, pricing
  • Payouts from the Play account are working normally
  • Google Play support says failed payments now show as Pending then Canceled rather than Declined, but can't say why every charge fails

Context that may matter

Most trials come from Google Ads, and the audience skews young (Gen Z). I've read the threads here about trial-optimised campaigns bringing in users without valid payment methods, and I'm open to that being the answer. But 13 out of 13, including US and UK buyers, feels like more than traffic quality.

Questions

  1. Is there anything in the RevenueCat data for these subscriptions (for example the raw Play purchase state or payment state) that would show why the charge failed?
  2. We're on default SDK config, so RevenueCat should be acknowledging purchases. Is there any way trial starts could be acknowledged correctly but renewals still fail on our side?
  3. Has anyone seen 100% failure like this turn out to be an account-level issue on the Play side (payments profile, verification, tax) rather than buyers' cards?
  4. For anyone who fixed this by switching to a paid intro offer or changing their ad conversion goal: did the conversion rate recover?

Happy to share app user IDs privately with the RevenueCat team.

1 reply

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  • Author
  • New Member
  • September 21, 2026

Quick update and a correction: the live build is actually on SDK 10.3.1 (per the customer record), not 10.0.2 as I wrote above.

Another failure today, UK, annual plan, Android. Same chain as the others: subscription extended (24h retry) on 20 Sep, then "entered billing error grace period" and "canceled due to billing error" at the same timestamp. We see this simultaneous grace-plus-cancel on every failure, even though grace is configured at 7 days. Does that pattern suggest Play is treating these as hard declines, and is there anything in the raw Play notification data that would show the decline reason?