Receipt Verification for IAP Apps

The Receipt Verification Service (RVS) enables validation of purchases made by your app's users.

• RVS overview
• Set up RVS
• RVS request syntax
• RVS response syntax
  • RVS response codes
  • RVS response fields for successful transactions
  • Promotional pricing in RVS
    • Valid value descriptions
    • Promotional pricing FAQs
• Cancel date and renewal date
• RVS sandbox and production examples

RVS overview

The following image shows the purchase workflow with receipt verification. RVS starts after the IAP API completes the purchase and returns the purchase receipt to the app.

The steps in the following table match the callouts in the diagram above:

You can also use RVS to enable access to a subscription purchased on another platform, such as your website, as long as the purchase was made through Amazon. The following scenario describes this workflow:

1. Your app's user purchases a subscription through Amazon via your company's website.
2. Your app receives a receipt for the purchased subscription
3. To enable access, your app then sends information from the receipt to your server. Finally, your server validates this transaction by querying RVS.

Set up RVS

RVS provides two environment options, depending on whether your app is in the development/testing stage or has been published to the Amazon Appstore:

• RVS Cloud Sandbox: While developing and testing your app, use an RVS Sandbox environment to verify receipts generated by the App Tester testing tool. To set up an RVS Cloud Sandbox, see Use RVS Cloud Sandbox.
• RVS production server: After you publish your app to the Amazon Appstore, you can use the Amazon RVS production server. See Instructions for RVS Production Environment.

RVS request syntax

Use RVS to validate the PurchaseResponse object, or the PurchaseUpdatesResponse object. From these response objects, you can extract a UserId, which denotes a unique identifier of the user. The PurchaseResponse object contains a ReceiptId, which is used in conjunction with the UserId to perform an out-of-band server-side validation of the purchase. Requests from your server require a shared secret to be passed to confirm your identity for security.

These requests use the following format:

<Protocol>//<Server>[/<sandbox>]/version/<Operation_version_number>/verifyReceiptId/developer/<Shared_Secret>/user/<UserId>/receiptId/<ReceiptId>

The terms in angle brackets are the request parameters, replace them with the following values for the transaction being verified:

• Protocol: Protocol being used to communicate with the server or sandbox, such as https:.
• Server: URL for the RVS server that you are communicating with.
  • Both the RVS Cloud Sandbox server and the RVS production server use the URL "appstore-sdk.amazon.com".
• sandbox: If you are using the RVS Cloud Sandbox server, use the value "sandbox". If you are using the RVS production server, omit this parameter.
• Operation_version_number: Version number of the verifyReceiptId operation. This version number is independent of the IAP version number. The current verifyReceiptId version number is "1.0".
• Shared_secret: Shared secret used to identify the developer issuing the request. Your shared secret can be found on the Shared Key page for your developer account with the Amazon Appstore: https://developer.amazon.com/sdk/shared-key.html. For the RVSSandbox, the Shared Secret can be any non-empty string.
• UserId: ID representing a distinct Amazon customer for your Appstore app: PurchaseResponse.getUserData().getUserId().
• ReceiptId: Unique ID for the purchase: PurchaseResponse.getReceipt().getReceiptId() or PurchaseUpdatesResponse.getReceipts() → Receipt.getReceiptId().

RVS response syntax

RVS provides a RESTful JSON API interface. As a best practice, use a JSON parser class for reading the JSON responses from the RVS server.

After making a request to verify a transaction, the RVS server or sandbox returns a response code indicating if the request was successful. If successful, the returned JSON response includes information about the transaction.

The following example shows a successful response:

   {
    "autoRenewing":false,
    "betaProduct":false,
    "cancelDate":null,
    "cancelReason":null,
    "freeTrialEndDate":null,
    "gracePeriodEndDate":null,
    "parentProductId":null,
    "productId":"com.amazon.iapsamplev2.gold_medal",
    "productType":"CONSUMABLE",
    "promotions":null,
    "purchaseDate":1399070221749,
    "purchaseMetadataMap":null,
    "quantity":1,
    "receiptId":"wE1EG1gsEZI9q9UnI5YoZ2OxeoVKPdR5bvPMqyKQq5Y=:1:11",
    "renewalDate":null,
    "term":null,
    "termSku":null,
    "testTransaction":true
    }

RVS response codes

The Receipt Verification Service responds with one of the following codes, which indicate the result of the validation check:

RVS response fields for successful transactions

The following table lists and describes the fields included in an RVS response for a successful transaction:

Promotional pricing in RVS

For details on how to set up a promotional pricing offer, see Set Up Promotional Pricing. If a customer purchased a subscription with promotional pricing, the receipt returned through RVS includes the promotion details. The JSON response described in the previous section includes a promotions field. This section explains the promotions field in more detail. Promotion details are present only on a receipt that corresponds to a customer's purchase of subscription with promotional pricing.

The promotions field is null if there is no promotion associated with the receipt. Otherwise, the field contains a list of Promotion objects, with the following fields.

Example:

"promotions": [
    {
            "promotionType":"Introductory Price - All customers",
            "promotionStatus":"Completed"
    }
]

Valid value descriptions

Valid values for the promotionType field are:

• Introductory Price - All customers — An offer available to all customers (includes new and lapsed customers).
• Promotional Price - Lapsed customers — An offer available to lapsed customers only.

Valid values for the promotionStatus field are:

• Queued — The customer purchased a subscription with a promotional offer. Currently, they're on a free trial and have yet to start the promotion period.
• InProgress — The customer is currently enjoying a promotional offer.
• Completed — The customer has completed the promotional period.

Promotional pricing FAQs

Q: Are the promotion details available in all the receipts for a customer's subscription?

No, the promotion details are present only on the receipt corresponding to the subscription purchase with promotional pricing.

Q: Are the promotion details present after the receipt is canceled?

Yes, the promotion details are present as Completed if the customer's subscription is canceled.

Q: What is the promotion status if the customer cancels the subscription during the free trial, before renewing to the promotional plan?

Since the customer didn't start the promotional period, the receipt doesn't have any promotion details associated with it.

Cancel date and renewal date

The renewalDate field contains the date that an auto-renew subscription purchase next needs to be renewed. This field applies to subscription purchases only. If a customer has a monthly subscription, the subscription renews monthly on the same date the customer first subscribed. In the case where the next month does not include the exact date, the renewal date is the closest prior date. For example:

• If a customer subscribed on January 2, the next three renewal dates are February 2, March 2, and April 2.
• If a customer subscribed on January 31, the next three renewal dates are February 28 (or February 29 if it is a leap year), March 31, and April 30.

The cancelDate field contains the date that a subscription purchase expired or that Amazon customer service canceled the purchase. The cancel date represents the date when the customer lost access to the content. When a customer cancels their subscription by turning off auto-renew, the cancel date is when the renewal date would have been.

The renewalDate and cancelDate fields are stored as time in milliseconds. You can use java.util.Date(timeInMillis) to convert the value into a date object.

Consumable or entitlement purchase

In a valid receipt, the cancel date and renewal date both contain the null value. If the cancel date field is not null, it contains the date that Amazon customer service canceled the purchase.

Subscription purchase

In a valid subscription receipt, the cancel date is null. If the cancelDate field is not null, it contains the date that the subscription expired, or that Amazon customer service canceled the purchase.

The renewalDate field contains the date that an auto-renew subscription purchase next needs to be renewed. The field value will be null if the subscription is not set to auto-renew.

In the following example, the user has a subscription that was canceled:

• The subscription was active from 2016/01/01 – 2016/03/01. In this receipt, the purchaseDate for this subscription is set to 2016/01/01, and the cancelDate is set to 2016/03/01.
• If this subscription is subsequently reactivated on 2016/04/01, the subscription will have a second receipt. The second receipt will show a purchaseDate of 2016/04/01 and a cancelDate of null.

RVS sandbox and production examples

See RVS Examples.

Last updated: Mar 13, 2023