Gift card and family sharing.

I’m still struggling with this. I have bought a gift card for myself and redeemed it in order to avoid using the Family Sharing ograniser’s payment method, however when I try and purchase anything I am prompted to verify their payment method.

So I now appear to have wasted money on gift card I cannot use. Anyone else have any ideas?

How about if the organizer redeems the gift card? I redeemed a gift card thinking my family could use the balance also and instead they charged my credit card leaving my gift balance intact. A call to support was unhelpful as usual...

When in Family Sharing, a family member can use iTunes Gift card credit to pay for purchases.

Family purchases and payments - Apple Support

Making purchases

After you set up your family, any time a family member initiates a new purchase it will be billed directly to your account, unless that family member has gift or store credit. First, their store credit will be used to pay the partial or total bill. The remainder will bill to the family organizer's card.

Make sure that what you were billed for is in fact the entirety of the purchase. If the purchase cost exceeds the itunes credit available in your child's account the remainder will be billed your account. Also the credit must have been redeemed onto the account, and be available before initiating the purchase.

I can verify that this is what correct. My son had a gift card balance applied to his account. After verifying the card, the balance was correctly deducted from the gift card balance.

From these articles, it appears that as long as your child is a member of Family Sharing, he cannot use his own account. Further, if he is under age 13 (age varies by country or region), he may not leave Family Sharing.

Family Sharing and Apple ID for your child - Apple Support

Change or remove your Apple ID payment information - Apple Support

Payment methods that you can use in the iTunes Store, App Store, and iBooks Store - Apple Support

That language is no longer listed in the support page. It now reads:

Any time a family member makes a new purchase, it's billed directly to the family organizer's account. That means the family organizer pays for any iTunes, iBooks, and App Store purchases of the other family members. This also includes content that family members can't share

Which seems to indicate they are not able to use gift cards/store credit for individual purchases anymore.

Yes, that is normal. Organizer's card needs to be verified in case the cost of the item exceeds the amount of credit in the account doing the purchase and it needs to be charged.

Just verify the Organizers payment method, and as said, the charge should happen form your available gift card balance first, and only charge the organizers card if there is not enough to cover the cost of the purchase.

The text stating the ability to use gift cards can now be found in:

Payment methods that you can use in the iTunes Store, App Store, and iBooks Store - Apple Support

Payment methods for Family Sharing

...

If a family member has store credit on their Apple ID, then the credit is used before any remainder is charged to the organizer's payment method. When setting up Family Sharing, the organizer is prompted to change their payment to a valid method for Family Sharing (if they haven’t already). They can also change to a different valid method for Family Sharing at any time or turn purchase sharing on or off.

Note that the itunes Gift card must be redeemed onto the Family Member's account and not the Family Organizer's account.

If the card was redeemed to the organizer's account, then only they can use the balance. Any purchases initiated by them directly will use the balance. Purchases initiated by other family members will still be directly charged to the organizer's credit card.

You can, if the balance is still unused, request it be put back on the gift card so it can be redeemed onto another family member's account and then used by them when making purchases.

You can use the following form to contact iTunes support if required to put the balance back on the gift card

http://www.apple.com/emea/support/itunes/contact.html

Phil0124,

Well done, thank you. I am now wiser and stand corrected. I did not find the article you used when hunting around.

I must say the method described makes perfect sense.

Thanks again for the correction.