App account deletion doesn't cancel a subscription, and the refund requests that follow can still land on you

Apple's own guidance says it plainly: when a user with an auto-renewable subscription deletes their account, tell them their billing will continue through Apple. App account deletion is now mandatory on both stores, and on neither store does it stop the charges. The subscription lives with Apple or Google, not with your user table. So the account goes, the renewals keep coming, and a few weeks later the same person asks for their money back. That refund request can reach you at the exact moment you've thrown away everything you'd need to answer it. Here's what each store requires, where deletion collides with the two refund flows that ask for your input, and what you can keep.

What Apple and Google Play require for app account deletion

Both stores made deletion a listing requirement, and both wrote rules about subscriptions into it. They differ in how much they say about the data you can keep.

On the App Store

Guideline 5.1.1(v) is one sentence long on this point: if your app supports account creation, you must also offer account deletion within the app. Apple's support page fills in the details. It points you to showManageSubscription(in:) on iOS 15 and later, or to the apps.apple.com subscriptions link, so the user can cancel before deleting. It also names beginRefundRequest(in:) and Apple's support link as ways to let customers submit refund requests.

On Google Play

Google asks for two doors: an in-app path to delete the account and its data, and a web link resource for people who no longer have the app installed. If the user has to do something first, such as cancel a subscription, Google says that step must be clearly outlined and a support flow must exist. Google's subscription help for users adds a line many people miss: uninstalling the app doesn't cancel the subscription either.

Why deleted accounts turn into refund requests

Most refunds never ask you anything. Apple decides refund requests itself. On Google Play, buyers can refund many purchases themselves within 48 hours, and support grants others without you. A deleted account doesn't change who decides. It changes what the customer believes they paid for.

Does deleting my account cancel my subscription?

This is the question users actually type, and the honest answer is no. A user who deletes their account and assumes they're done will see the next renewal on their card. To them, it's a charge for a service they ended. That person is a likely refund request, and if the store says no, a likely bank dispute.

The flows that ask for your evidence

Only two refund flows ask a developer for anything. Apple sends a CONSUMPTION_REQUEST and gives you 12 hours to answer through Send Consumption Information. Google Play sends a pendingRefundReviewNotification when a user files a chargeback that needs developer review, and you have 24 hours to answer through orders.reviewrefund. Everything else, from 48-hour self-service refunds to support refunds and voided purchases, is decided without you. Chargebacks, once the bank decides them, are final.

How app account deletion breaks your refund answer

Both evidence flows assume you can connect a store transaction to a person and to what they used. A hard delete cuts that line in two places.

The identifier points to nothing

Google's chargeback notification names the buyer by the obfuscatedAccountId you passed at purchase. On Apple, the appAccountToken you set at purchase plays the same role. Both are your own identifiers. If the row they pointed to is gone, you can't say whether the item was delivered or how much of it was used, so orders.reviewrefund gets a guess or nothing at all inside its 24 hours.

Consent may be gone too

Apple's endpoint won't accept consumption data unless customerConsented is true. It returns an HTTP 400 otherwise, and Apple's guidance is to not respond at all when the customer didn't consent. Apple's own example consent language tells customers they can withdraw consent at any time. Apple doesn't say whether deleting an account withdraws it. If your consent text doesn't settle that, the cautious move is to treat a deleted account as a customer who has stopped consenting, and let the 12 hours pass.

What it costs when a deleted account disputes a charge

The money here comes from renewals you collected but didn't serve, and from disputes you can't answer.

Renewals after deletion

Take a $9.99 monthly subscriber who deletes their account and forgets to cancel. Three more renewals bill $29.97 before they notice. You served none of it, so there's no compute, API or storage cost behind those charges, but there's also nothing to defend. A refund of those months is the likely outcome, and it's a fair one.

Chargebacks you can't contest

For Google Play orders placed after August 3, 2026, a lost chargeback costs you the purchase price, less Play's service fee, plus the bank's chargeback fee. That's the case where deletion hurts most. Say the dispute covers an annual plan bought months before the deletion, which the customer used heavily. You paid for the compute, the third-party API calls and the storage behind that usage. If you wiped the account, you can't show any of it, and you pay the fee on top of losing the sale.

What to keep after app account deletion, and how to tell users

Google's policy names fraud prevention as a legitimate reason to retain data, if you disclose it. Apple's guidance tells you to follow local law and to let users know when law requires you to keep something. Neither is a license to keep the whole profile. Check the specifics with counsel, because the rules vary by country.

A minimal purchase ledger

• Store transaction IDs, order IDs and purchase tokens, with dates and amounts.
• The appAccountToken or obfuscatedAccountId each purchase carried, mapped to that ledger instead of to a profile.
• Delivery status and aggregate usage counts per purchase, not the content the user created.
• The consent state for sharing consumption data with Apple, and when it changed.

Disclose it at the point of deletion

Put the retention in the deletion flow itself, in one or two plain sentences. Say what you keep, why, and for how long. Google requires that disclosure for retained data, and Apple asks you to tell users when law requires you to keep some.

Offer the cancel step before the delete step

Show subscription status on the deletion screen and link to the store's subscription page first. On iOS, Apple lets you offer deletion scheduled for the subscription's expiration date, alongside an immediate option. A user who cancels before deleting won't be charged again, and that's the refund request you never receive.

RefundHalt answers CONSUMPTION_REQUEST and chargeback review notifications from purchase-level records you control. If a customer's account is gone but the ledger entry remains, the response can still go out inside the window.