Apple's new feature to help users fix billing issues without leaving app

Apple has announced a new feature that will help users resolve payment issues so that they can stay subscribed to their content, services, and premium features. This is essentially a new way to let users continue their subscription when their existing mode of payment fails due to any reason.

“Starting this summer, if an auto-renewable subscription doesn’t renew due to a billing issue, a system-provided sheet appears in your app with a prompt that lets customers update their payment method for their Apple ID,” Apple said in a blog post. Previously, when a subscriber’s payment method failed, they would contact the app developer for assistance.

Apple said this new feature would instead inform customers inside the app when their payment method fails, eliminating the need for consumers to contact the developer for assistance with this common issue.

For instance, if a subscription is in the billing retry stage, Apple employs machine learning to optimise payment retries for the highest possible recovery rate. When the Billing Grace Period is enabled, consumers can continue to utilise their services while Apple attempts to collect a payment, according to the company.

This feature will require a minimum of iOS 16.4 or iPadOS 16.4. The current stable update version available for eligible iPhone and iPad devices is iOS 16.4.1 and iPadOS 16.4.1, which means the new feature is available to iPhone 8 and above and all models of iPad Pro, 3rd-generation iPad Air and later, 5th-generation iPad and later, and 5th-generation iPad mini and later.

Meanwhile, Apple has launched a new high-yield savings account for Apple Card users that will come with a 4.15 annual percentage yield (APY). Apple Card users can now choose to grow their Daily Cash rewards by automatically depositing their Daily Cash into a high-yield Savings account from Goldman Sachs. But since the Apple Card services are available in the US, only customers in the US will be able to open savings accounts.

— Written with inputs from IANS