85% of Subscriptions are in Billing Retry State

same issue here

Same issue here, and it’s a major problem for our business. Our user base is primarily made up of college students and young adults, and we’re seeing 70-80% of our subscriptions stuck in billing retry state. This is causing significant revenue instability and user churn, as many of our student customers rely on temporary payment methods or have limited funds that fail during renewal. It’s become a core operational risk, and we’re urgently looking for solutions or any official guidance from Apple on how to mitigate this. Hoping to connect with others facing similar challenges, or to hear if there are best practices we’re missing.

With free trials specifically, a high billing retry rate usually means users signed up with payment methods that fail at the first real charge (prepaid cards, expired cards, insufficient funds). A few things that can help: first, make sure you're listening for DID_FAIL_TO_RENEW and BILLING_RECOVERY server notifications so you can message those users in-app and prompt them to update their payment method via showManageSubscriptions. Second, check if your trial length and pricing are attracting a lot of "tire kickers" who never intended to pay. Third, consider whether a shorter trial or an introductory offer instead of a free trial might filter for higher-intent users. Unfortunately Apple handles the actual retry logic on their end, so there's no way to control the retry cadence, but surfacing the payment issue to users early is the biggest lever you have.