Author: Smin Rana

App Store Server Notifications

App Store Server Notifications V2 allows Apple to notify your backend in real time about subscription events such as renewals, cancellations, refunds, and billing issues. In this guide, you’ll learn how to decode, verify, and process App Store Server Notifications V2 using PHP and Laravel, with practical examples and best practices for production use.

App offering subscription based products must use App Store Server Notification to verify the purchase, renew the subscription, cancel the subscription, and more.

What are App Store Server Notifications?

App Store Server Notifications are webhooks sent by Apple to your server whenever a significant event happens to an in-app purchase or auto-renewable subscription.

Common events include:

• Subscription renewal
• Cancellation or expiration
• Refunds and revocations
• Billing retry failures
• Price increases

With Server Notifications V2, Apple sends a signed payload (JWT) that contains detailed transaction and renewal information, allowing your backend to stay in sync without relying solely on client-side validation.

Why Use Version 2 (vs V1)?

Apple introduced Server Notifications V2 to replace V1 with a more secure, structured, and extensible format.

Key advantages of V2:

• Uses JWT (JSON Web Tokens) for payload security
• Provides richer transaction and renewal data
• Supports App Store Server API integration
• Better future compatibility with Apple’s subscription system

If you’re building or maintaining a modern subscription-based app, V2 is the recommended and future-proof choice.

How Apple Server Notifications Work
The notification flow looks like this:

1. A subscription event occurs on the App Store
2. Apple sends a POST request to your webhook endpoint
3. The request contains a signedPayload
4. Your server:
   • Decodes the JWT
   • Verifies the signature
   • Extracts transaction and renewal data
5. Your backend updates the user subscription status accordingly

This process ensures your server remains the source of truth for subscription state.

My Intentions

My main goal is to retrieve the originalTransactionId from the notification data. Then, when a subscription expires or Is Refunded, it will downgrade the user’s subscription status.

Related reading

Step-by-Step Implementation (without library)

If you prefer full control, you can implement Server Notifications V2 without any third-party libraries.

High-level steps:

1. Read the raw POST body from Apple
2. Extract the signedPayload
3. Split the JWT into header, payload, and signature
4. Base64-decode the payload
5. Parse and process the JSON data

This approach is useful for:

• Learning how V2 works internally
• Minimal dependencies
• Custom verification logic

However, you must be careful with signature verification and edge cases.

Implementation with JWT Library

Using a JWT library simplifies decoding and validation while reducing security risks.

Typical steps:

1. Install a trusted JWT library
2. Decode the signedPayload
3. Validate the JWT signature using Apple’s public key
4. Extract:
   • notificationType
   • subtype
   • transactionInfo
   • renewalInfo

This method is recommended for most production systems because it is safer, cleaner, and easier to maintain.

App Store Configuration

User purchases we verify Apple’s receipt and we save originalTransactionId in our database. So each user has originalTransactionId and we can find the user with this originalTransactionId. You can read more about this here Auto-renewable subscriptions with SwiftUI

Make sure you set your app store notification URL on the AppStoreConnect. Choose Version 2 Notifications.

Each data will look like this, call it signedPayload.

The signedPayload object is a JWS representation. To get the transaction and subscription renewal details from the notification payload, process the signedPayload as follows:

1. Parse signedPayload to identify the JWS header, payload, and signature representations.
2. Base64 URL-decode the payload to get the responseBodyV2DecodedPayload. The decoded payload contains the notificationType , subtype, other notification metadata, and a data object.
3. The data object contains a signedTransactionInfo (JWSTransaction) and depending on the notification type, a signedRenewalInfo (JWSRenewalInfo). Parse and Base64 URL-decode these signed JWS representations to get transaction and subscription renewal details.

Each of the signed JWS representations, signedPayload, signedTransactionInfo, and signedRenewalInfo, have a JWS signature that you can validate on your server. Use the algorithm specified in the header’s alg parameter to validate the signature. For more information about validating signatures, see the JSON Web Signature (JWS) IETF RFC 7515 specification.

Hopefully, you are already getting this data. Now let’s get originalTransactionId from this. We will do this without any 3rd party library first to understand the process.

First thing, I will download the Apple root certificate and make it.PEM file from it.

Download the certificate https://www.apple.com/certificateauthority/AppleRootCA-G3.cer

Get .PEM file from it, on your Mac Terminal

openssl x509 -in AppleRootCA-G3.cer -out apple_root.pem

For testing purposes, I’m loading apple_root.pem and my signedPayload from a file called notification.json (replace it with file_get_contents(‘php://input’);) and then decoding the signedPayload. signedPayload has three parts, separated by .(dot), line 13.

The first part is the header, the Second part is the body (payload), and the Third part is the signature. The header has an algorithm and x5c, x5c has three elements. Certificate, intermediate certificate, and root certificate. We can verify the certificate in two steps. Once the verification is completed, we know we have signedPayload from Apple.

Finally, decode the payload again and get the originalTransactionId from lines 56 to 65.

Server Side

For this article, our production server URL looks like inafiz.com/jwt.php. You can get whatever Apple sends you and write a log in your server if you are interested.

$appleData = file_get_contents('php://input');
$file = fopen(
    "/var/www/html/appstore_prod.log", "a"
);
fwrite($file, $appleData);
fclose($file);

Without any 3rd party library(not recommended).

<?php

ini_set('display_errors', 1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);

// Download the certificate -> https://www.apple.com/certificateauthority/AppleRootCA-G3.cer
// Convert it to .PEM file, run on macOS terminal ->  ```bash openssl x509 -in AppleRootCA-G3.cer -out apple_root.pem```

$pem = file_get_contents('apple_root.pem');
$data = file_get_contents('notification.json'); // replace with file_get_contents('php://input');
$json = json_decode($data);

$header_payload_secret = explode('.', $json->signedPayload);

//------------------------------------------
// Header
//------------------------------------------
$header = json_decode(base64_decode($header_payload_secret[0]));
$algorithm = $header->alg;
$x5c = $header->x5c; // array
$certificate = $x5c[0];
$intermediate_certificate = $x5c[1];
$root_certificate = $x5c[2];

$certificate =
      "-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----\n"
    . $certificate
    . "\n-----END CERTIFICATE-----";

$intermediate_certificate =
      "-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----\n"
    . $intermediate_certificate
    . "\n-----END CERTIFICATE-----";

$root_certificate =
      "-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----\n"
    . $root_certificate
    . "\n-----END CERTIFICATE-----";

//------------------------------------------
// Verify the notification request   
//------------------------------------------
if (openssl_x509_verify($intermediate_certificate, $root_certificate) != 1){ 
    echo 'Intermediate and Root certificate do not match';
    exit;
}

// Verify again with Apple root certificate
if (openssl_x509_verify($root_certificate, $pem) == 1){
    //------------------------------------------
    // Payload
    //------------------------------------------
    // https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appstoreservernotifications/notificationtype
    // https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appstoreservernotifications/subtype
    $payload = json_decode(base64_decode($header_payload_secret[1]));
    $notificationType = $payload->notificationType;
    $subtype = $payload->subtype;

    if ($notificationType == "EXPIRED" || $notificationType == "REFUND") {
        $transactionInfo = $payload->data->signedTransactionInfo;
        $ti = explode('.', $transactionInfo);
        
        $data = json_decode(base64_decode($ti[1]));
        var_dump($data); // this will contain our originalTransactionId
    }
} else {
    echo 'Header is not valid';
    exit;
}

Using firebase/php-jwt in composer (recommended), big difference is to use the public key to decode the payload using JWT.

composer require firebase/php-jwt

<?php

ini_set('display_errors', 1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);

// No need these 3 lines for Laravel
require_once './vendor/firebase/php-jwt/src/JWT.php';
require_once './vendor/firebase/php-jwt/src/JWK.php';
require_once './vendor/firebase/php-jwt/src/Key.php';

use Firebase\JWT\JWT;
use Firebase\JWT\Key;

// Download the certificate -> https://www.apple.com/certificateauthority/AppleRootCA-G3.cer
// Convert it to .PEM file, run on macOS terminal ->  ```bash openssl x509 -in AppleRootCA-G3.cer -out apple_root.pem```

$pem = file_get_contents('apple_root.pem');

$data = file_get_contents('notification.json');  // replace with file_get_contents('php://input');
$json = json_decode($data);

$header_payload_secret = explode('.', $json->signedPayload);

//------------------------------------------
// Header
//------------------------------------------
$header = json_decode(base64_decode($header_payload_secret[0]));
$algorithm = $header->alg;
$x5c = $header->x5c; // array
$certificate = $x5c[0];
$intermediate_certificate = $x5c[1];
$root_certificate = $x5c[2];

$certificate =
      "-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----\n"
    . $certificate
    . "\n-----END CERTIFICATE-----";

$intermediate_certificate =
      "-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----\n"
    . $intermediate_certificate
    . "\n-----END CERTIFICATE-----";

$root_certificate =
      "-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----\n"
    . $root_certificate
    . "\n-----END CERTIFICATE-----";

//------------------------------------------
// Verify the notification request   
//------------------------------------------

if (openssl_x509_verify($intermediate_certificate, $root_certificate) != 1){ 
    echo 'Intermediate and Root certificate do not match';
    exit;
}

// Verify again with Apple root certificate
if (openssl_x509_verify($root_certificate, $pem) == 1){
    $cert_object = openssl_x509_read($certificate);
    $pkey_object = openssl_pkey_get_public($cert_object);
    $pkey_array = openssl_pkey_get_details($pkey_object);
    $publicKey = $pkey_array['key'];

    //------------------------------------------
    // Payload
    //------------------------------------------
    $payload = json_decode(base64_decode($header_payload_secret[1]));
    $notificationType = $payload->notificationType;

    //if ($notificationType == "EXPIRED" || $notificationType == "REFUND") {
        $transactionInfo = $payload->data->signedTransactionInfo;
        $signedRenewalInfo = $payload->data->signedRenewalInfo;

        $transactionDecodedData = JWT::decode($transactionInfo, new Key($publicKey, $algorithm));
        var_dump($transactionDecodedData->originalTransactionId);
        echo "========================================";
        $signedRenewalDecodedData = JWT::decode($signedRenewalInfo, new Key($publicKey, $algorithm));
        var_dump($signedRenewalDecodedData);
    //}

} else {
    echo 'Header is not valid';
    exit;
}

Conclusion & Next Steps

App Store Server Notifications V2 are essential for managing subscriptions reliably in modern iOS apps.

By implementing them correctly in PHP and Laravel, you can:

• Keep subscription states accurate
• React to real-time billing events
• Reduce reliance on client-side receipt validation

Next steps:

• Add App Store Server API integration
• Store originalTransactionId as a primary key
• Build retry-safe webhook processing
• Automate subscription audits

If you’d like a full Laravel package or production-ready webhook example, feel free to reach out or leave a comment

Download the source code