Tranfering Apps between accounts (Apple and Google)

General guidance

Our general guidance for account migrations is:

If you are changing the App Store Connect or Google Developer account, this will require credentials to be regenerated for both.

• For Apple, these are the app-specific shared secret, the in-app purchase key, and the App Store Connect API key. The new owner will also want to make sure their Paid Applications Agreement is signed with Apple.
• For Google, these are the service credentials. To reduce any downtime, we recommend the new owner generate these credentials in advance and test them on a RevenueCat project to make sure they are validated and working before the transfer.

Source: https://www.revenuecat.com/docs/projects/overview#transferring-ownership
 
Provided these credentials are set correctly (and the bundle ID remains the same), RevenueCat will continue to function as normal. In-App Purchases for your customers will not carry over unless the app is transferred through the official App Store / Play Store process and maintains the same bundle ID / package name.
 

Specific guidance for App Store

The steps here would be:

1. Ensure that your app has a app-specific shared secret and App Store Connect API key correctly configured
2. All agreements are signed and have status "Active" in the Business tab of App Store Connect for the destination (and source) Apple Developer accounts
3. Initiate the Apple Developer Account change
4. As soon as the Apple Developer Account change is complete, update the in-app purchase key in RevenueCat
5. Then update the app-specific shared secret and App Store Connect API key using the steps described in our linked documentation

Configuring the app-specific shared secret prior to the transfer ensures a fallback for RevenueCat validating/processing transactions while the transfer is taking place. Once the in-app purchase key is updated post-transfer, we'll prefer using the key (rather than the secret) for validating/processing transactions.

Specific guidance for Play Store

I believe that it may be possible to re-use the same service account credentials, but we typically recommend creating new credentials to use with a new Google Play account. This keeps a tidy and logical separation which can be easier to maintain going forward.
 
To avoid any downtime when switching the credentials in RevenueCat, we recommended that you create a new app within your RevenueCat project to first verify and validate the credentials. By doing so, you can fetch offerings and make a test purchase to ensure everything is working fine.
 
The process would be:

1. Create service credentials associated with the new Google account following these steps. You’ll need to add these credentials to your new account (so that they will work post transfer) and previous account (so that you can validate them while your app is in the current account).
2. Wait about 36 hours
3. Test your credentials with a new RevenueCat app (just to test sandbox purchases)
4. If they work, perform the transfer to your Google Play business account
5. As soon as the switch is complete, upload the new (and validated) service credentials to your production app in RevenueCat. They will replace the previous credentials and take effect immediately.

Thank you so much Chris! 
 

Got another question about users which already have the app, 

since old users uses the old sdk key, what would happen to their purchases after the transfer? 
Will they be required to update the app? Is there any way to avoid them suddenly see they don’t have active subscription? Or them not allowed to make purchases due the the sdk key not connected to the app on that developer account anymore.

Hi! ​@mordechai-tsarfati-0d613b I am coming from the private support ticket that you submitted. To clarify the process here, outside of the test app that you are using to make sure that the Google Play Credentials in the new account are working, you do not need to create a new app in either situation so there will not be a new SDK key generated that you will need to include in your apps. It will stay the same as, in the end, you will just be updating the credentials of your current production app in the RevenueCat Dashboard with the credentials from your new Google Play Store account.

Hey Clark, since I’m going to use a different RevenueCat account I assumed a new sdk key would be generated? 
 

for current users correct me I’m wrong, they will preserve the subscription due to the fact you guys are using StoreKit under the hood to check it?

but would the subscription be synced with the user on RevenueCat? I will be still using the same user id, but different account completely for the LLC.

would love to get some understanding about the process, and how the migration would work, we have already over 700 users and the last thing we want is some users to experience issues 😅

If possible to move to a better contact channel, it would be awesome 🙌 

Sorry about missing that line about your new RevenueCat account in your original message!

We actually offer the ability for you to transfer ownership of RevenueCat apps between accounts, so once you complete the transfers on the Google and Apple ends (along with the necessary work for these transfers in RevenueCat), you can then go ahead and transfer the ownership in the RevenueCat to your new company account. Here is our documentation on how to do so. It will be a much smoother process than creating new accounts and will mean that your data is fully preserved without having to do a manual data migration. The only technical aspect that you need to be conscious of when doing the transfer is, if you are using the Apple Search Ads integration, it will need to be reconfigured once the projects are transferred within RevenueCat. 

oh wow!! I wasn’t aware of it, thank you so much for pointing it out, I guess that’s probably cover everything.

so I would just need to follow Chris guide for the transfer between the accounts, and once it’s done, simply transfer the RevenueCat app to my new account? 
 

thank you again for clarifying, makes things much smoother and easier :)