Since Sunday, many Russian iOS users have noticed that their iCloud bills and other subscriptions made through their iPhone or iPad have stopped going through. At the same time, you can still pay in offline stores. I say “still” because this possibility has either already disappeared or will disappear soon:

For example, cards in Apple ID became unavailable for me:

And when paying within the applications, the following picture happened:

And when I subscribed to the application, the iPhone gave out the following:

When adding a new card, the iPhone gave an error yesterday:

What does this mean?

This means that any subscriptions purchased through iPhone or iPad will not be charged on the next invoice. The reason is clear: payments by Russians simply do not go through, these are not the whims of IT companies at all. That is why many companies are forced to suspend work in the Russian market – they simply will not receive money.

Therefore, Apple will automatically transfer everyone to a free plan with 5 GB of storage in iCloud, and all people with paid subscriptions to services will not be able to use the usual services.

How to fix?

Today, March 7th, the easiest way is to relink your Visa or Mastercard to your Apple ID. Apparently, this is a working method that helps to return payment for subscriptions using Apple Pay.

Probably, on March 10, all this will be closed. The reason is the very disconnection of Russian Visa and Mastercard cards from Apple Pay. This date was given by the banks.

So let’s move on to other possibilities.

Plan b”

Disclaimer first:

We do not guarantee that this method, like any other, will subsequently work. Therefore, we cannot talk about the safety of your funds if the methods described below stop working.

The decision applies only to those subscriptions that were issued through the App Store, that is, inside applications. You can see their list along the path “Settings” → Your Apple ID (usually indicated by a name) → “Subscriptions”. My list of “acting” is not so wide:

It’s also worth adding an iCloud subscription, which I worry about the most. There are many of my data, as well as old photos and videos that are important to me.

In order not to lose this data, you can connect a backup payment method. And it’s called “Apple ID account”. It’s a kind of wallet. Here is the money that can be used to pay for applications and subscriptions issued through the App Store.

You can top up your account using the following path: App Store → Your profile picture in the upper right corner → “Top up Apple ID”.

In this case, payment for all subscriptions issued within applications will be debited from this account. Also, it is from him that money will go if you decide to buy some application.

Payment without a card

Another way is to pay by mobile phone. Money will be debited directly from the account of your number.

You can connect the number for payment in the same place where you can link the card: “Settings” → Your Apple ID (usually indicated by the name and surname of the owner of the iPhone / iPad) → “Payment and delivery” → “Add payment method” → “Mobile phone”.

Each operator works with an Apple ID differently. For example, at MegaFon and MTS, the funds are simply debited from the account of your phone number.

With Beeline, the story is more complicated: money is debited from a specially created account. Refilling it is pretty easy. Suppose you have the number of this operator in the format +7 (9xx) xxx-xx-xx. To work with Apple ID, you need to send money to the number +7 (6xx) xxx-xxx-xx, that is, instead of the first nine, write six. The method is strange and it is not clear why it was done this way, but as it is.

We will add a method for Tele2 later.

Once again, we do not guarantee that these methods will not be covered and that you will be able to continue using your subscriptions issued through the App Store.