Billed through Apple or Google? Cancel it where it lives

The two-merchant problem

Subscribe inside an iPhone or Android app and, in most cases, you entered a contract with the platform: Apple or Google charges your card, keeps the subscription record, and forwards a share to the app maker. Every confusing symptom follows from that split — the app’s support cannot see your billing, the app’s website shows no subscription, and the charge on your statement names the platform, not the product.

Step one: identify the biller

Look at the statement line of the charge. A generic platform entry means platform billing; the company’s own name means direct billing, and the company’s normal cancellation flow applies instead. If you subscribed on the company’s website with your card details, it is almost certainly direct; if you tapped a purchase sheet inside the app, it is almost certainly the platform.

Step two: cancel in the platform’s subscription screen

For Apple, subscriptions live in your Apple account settings on the device or in the App Store account menu; for Google, in the Play Store’s payments and subscriptions section. Cancel there, and screenshot the confirmation with the end date — that screenshot is your record. The subscription stays active until the period you paid for ends; that is normal, not a failed cancellation.

Step three: refunds go through the platform too

A charge you want back — a forgotten trial conversion, a child’s accidental subscription — goes through the platform’s refund request process, not the app’s support. Outcomes track speed and clarity: file promptly, state plainly what happened. Our trial playbook covers the wider sequence when a conversion charge lands.

The traps

Deleting the app. Removes the icon, keeps the contract. Always cancel first.

Cancelling on the company’s website while the platform bills. Two different systems; the platform subscription survives. This is the single most common way people get charged after cancelling.

Family purchase sharing. The subscription may live on another household member’s account — the organiser’s subscription screen is where it appears.

Recording the split

When you track your subscriptions, note the biller — “via Apple”, “via Google”, or direct — alongside the amount and renewal date. In a payment-method field, that one word answers the only question that matters at cancellation time: where does this subscription actually live?

This page gives general information, not legal advice. Statutes are summarised; the wording that binds is the current text of the law itself. For a contested case, a consumer-protection office or a licensed attorney in your state is the right address.