In-app purchases: user share of in-app purchases between Android and iOS

Question

I plan to add In-App purchases to my Productivity app. Advanced features are products to buy (e.g. freemium). I would like to access the acquired function on Android and iOS if he bought on any platform. Technically, I plan to store the purchase information on the server and receive it every time a user logs on to any device and unlock this function if it is already purchased.

Is this allowed on iOS and Android?

The Apple App Store Review Guide in Section 11 explains this.
Points "11.1 / 11.2" and "11.14" sound contradictory (or I'm missing something.).

In Android, I do not see a mention in Policies .

If you have experience (wrt exchange of purchase information between devices) that I should take care of, any suggestions are welcome.

Answer 1

Answering the question. I sent a mention of this case to the App Store and received its approval. I still can’t imagine Google Play, so I’m not sure about that.

Below is the snippet I mentioned in the App Store review notes that may help some

If a user has already purchased a premium outside the application (our website or Android), then we will unlock Premium as soon as the user logs in to the application on the iOS device. We do not include a single button or link or information inside this application regarding shopping on the street. If you have any concerns or comments regarding this, please let us know.

In addition, it was mentioned that our product service in the application is based on user data on our server, and not just on the iOS platform. I think this is a key point that it makes sense to reuse the custom purchase of our service. However, I do not find this case explicitly mentioned in the App Store Review Guide.

Answer 2

I would like to add a note about subscriptions. Here is a quote from the Apple manual:

Cross platform considerations

Product identifiers are associated with one application. Applications with both iOS and macOS versions have separate products with separate product identifiers on each platform. You can allow users who have an iOS app subscription to access content from the macOS app (or vice versa), but it is your responsibility to perform this function. You will need some kind of system to identify users and keep track of what content they subscribed to, similar to what you could implement for an application that uses non-renewable subscriptions

Link to Apple docs: https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/StoreKitGuide/Chapters/Subscriptions.html

Quote from Android docs:

You can also use an existing external subscriber base from your Android applications

• If you sell subscriptions on a website, for example, you can add your own business logic to your Android application to determine if the user has already purchased the subscription elsewhere, and then allow access to your content, if so, or offer a subscription purchase on google play if not.
• You can implement your own subscription exchange solution for as many different applications or products as you want ...

Link to Android docs: https://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/billing_subscriptions.html

At the time of writing the answer (May 23, 2017), the Windows Store does not have a subscription, but they were announced at the last BUILD conference. Some details here and here Subscriptions should be available later this summer.