Hi,
Sorry to hear of your issue with completing purchases using your Apple ID balance.
There are a couple different ways this issue/error can occur, but no matter how it has, there is always a resolution!
First, can you confirm your role within the FS?
Organizer, Family Member, Child account, or Teen account?
I ask this due to you mentioning you ‘deactivated the connection between the purchases’, and you mentioned you ‘have to ask for payments.’
- If you are the Organizer, disabling Purchase Sharing would not be effective in resolving this issue. It would only then stop the Organizer’s card information being shared with the rest of the Family, and revert everyone’s payment method back to the original that was used with their Apple ID prior to the Organizer enabling Purchase Sharing.
Apple ID balance can also only be used on the Apple ID it was redeemed to.
- If you are not the Organizer, and the organizer had Purchase Sharing enabled, this would possibly be effective in resolving the issue..This is due to other members of the family being unable to manage their payment methods associated to their Apple ID while the Organizer has this feature enabled.
Once disabled, you would be able to manage your payments as normal for your Apple ID.
As i mentioned earlier, Apple ID balance can only be used on the Apple ID it was redeemed to.
IF the Organizer had a billing issue with their Apple ID and/or payment method that was being previously shared, this billing issue can sometimes reflect across all other family members Apple IDs, interfere with subscription renewals, and prevent purchases being made with Apple ID balance until that billing issue is resolved.
By the Organizer disabling Purchase Sharing, and assuming you have no active subscriptions with your payment method set to None, you would then be able to use your Apple ID balance towards future purchases.
- If you have a Child or Teen account in the FS, you are not the Organizer.
If you have to ask for payments, it sounds as if you may be using the feature Ask to Buy.
Ask to Buy will send a request to the Organizer anytime a purchase is attempted, whether it is with Apple ID balance or not, and requires the Organizer to have Purchase Sharing enabled.
If the Organizer accepts the request, the purchase will complete as normal.
If the Organizer declines the request, the purchase will not complete/error out. This is expected behavior.
(*excluding subscription renewals; these are automatic and renew regardless of A2B being enabled)
- Family Sharing set aside, due to the content type you are requesting to purchase, referred to as an In-App Purchase, i would confirm that you do not have any Screen Time restrictions set up on your device that restrict this type of content from being purchased.
This can be confirmed in Settings > Screen Time > iTunes & App Store Purchases > In-App Purchases > Allow.
If this restriction was set up, disabling it will allow you to complete the purchase.
*Note: this will also now allow the option for Subscriptions to automatically renew on your Apple ID.
- Lastly, if none of the above applies to you, I would confirm that the issue persists when attempting to purchase another type of content. This is to isolate if the issue is with that App, or with the Apple ID account setup.
I would recommend attempting to purchase a single song on the iTunes Store App.
If the purchase does not go through, the issue is account related (FS, A2B, billing and payments, etc).
I would contact Apple Support for further assistance.
If the purchase does go through, the issue is related to that App or In-App content you were trying to purchase, and would be resolved by contacting the App Developer.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201079
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201079
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208982
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211187
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202631
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207959
Hope this helps!
