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
• Cancel Date and Renewal Date
• RVS Sandbox and Production Examples

RVS Overview

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

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 Receipt objects received in a PurchaseResponse or PurchaseUpdatesResponse. These response objects contain a UserId value that denotes a unique identifier of the user. The Receipt in the PurchaseResponse 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>/<[_RVSSandbox_]>/version/<Operation_version_number>/verifyReceiptId/developer/<Shared_Secret>/user/<UserId>/receiptId/<ReceiptId>

Replace the terms in the angle brackets with the following values for 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.
  • If you are using the RVS Sandbox, use "localhost:8080" or wherever you set up Tomcat.
  • If you are using the RVS production server, the URL is "appstore-sdk.amazon.com".
• [RVSSandbox]: If you are using the RVSSandbox, use the value "RVSSandbox". If you are using the RVS production server, omit this field.
• 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->userData->userId.
• ReceiptId: Unique ID for the purchase: purchaseResponse->receipt->receiptId or purchaseUpdatesResponse->receipts->receipt->receiptId.

RVS Response Syntax

RVS provides a RESTful JSON API interface. As a best practice, utilize 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 will return a response code indicating if the request was successful. If successful, the returned JSON response will include 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",
    "purchaseDate":1399070221749,
    "quantity":1,
    "receiptId":"wE1EG1gsEZI9q9UnI5YoZ2OxeoVKPdR5bvPMqyKQq5Y=:1:11",
    "renewalDate":null,
    "term":null,
    "termSku":null,
    "testTransaction":true
    }

RVS Response Codes

The Receipt Verification Service will respond 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:

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.

The cancelDate field contains the date that a subscription purchase expired or that Amazon customer service cancelled the purchase.

The renewal date and cancel date 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 cancelled 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 cancelled 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 cancelled:

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

RVS Sandbox and Production Examples

See RVS Examples.

Last updated: Apr 07, 2021