What happens if I stop paying?

Two inputs, one gate

Fold’em blocks when protection is still running and the Apple subscription is active. Both, at once. Remove either one and the blocking comes off, which is why a subscription that ends is a real ending and not a technicality.

This corrects an older answer. Fold’em used to promise that the lock outlived the subscription and that blocking continued whatever happened to the payment. That is no longer how it works, and the current rule is the plain one: no subscription, no blocking, after a window. The change was made deliberately, and the 72 hour lapse window it left behind is a real way out of a Fold’em block, which is why this page describes it in full.

The 72 hour lapse window

The moment Apple reports that the subscription has ended, the server stamps a lapse window on your account and sets it to open 72 hours later. You are told once, in a notification titled Your subscription ended, whatever your switches say. Nothing is released during those three days: the apps stay blocked, the sites stay blocked, the day count keeps running. When the window opens, a sweep that runs every few minutes flips your exclusion to released, cancels any open request to end protection, and the phone drops the shields the next time it reconciles. You are then told that your protection has ended, and that notice also arrives whatever your switches say.

This window is not the only 72 hour wait in Fold’em, and it is the only one about money. The others are the deletion delay's release and the Games category release. The wait that follows a keyholder agreeing to end your protection is a different length again, 48 hours, and belongs to a different mechanism entirely. None of them is this one, and none of them is shortened or lengthened by it.

Renewing before the window opens closes it. The server clears the window and nothing is released. A keyholder who joined by email is sent a letter saying protection continued.

What your circle is told

Apple notifies our server directly when a subscription expires, fails to renew, leaves its grace period, is refunded or is revoked. That notification does not travel through your phone, which is the point of it: a lapse reaches your circle even if the phone is off, offline or in a drawer, so letting the payment fail is not a quiet way out.

In the app they are told your protection is ending and never why: a notification, which their Protection ending switch can turn off, says it ends in 72 hours unless it is restored, and their History for you shows Protection ending either way. While the window runs, their card for you reads Protection at risk, and if it runs out, Protection ended. Nothing in their app names a payment, an amount, a plan or a card, and Money kept is never shared. A keyholder who joined by email gets letters that do say why: when a payment fails, when renewal is turned off, and when the subscription ends, with the day the blocks come off.

What this does not do

A lapse is not a request to end protection and never counts as one, but a window that runs out ends your protection all the same: the blocks come off, any open request to end protection closes, and Settings offers Start protection to begin again. Your gambling free days keep counting, and your keyholder and supporters stay in your circle. Your phone does not decide any of this: the window is stamped, counted and opened by the server, and the phone only puts back what it is told. The app reads Apple's status, a refund included, and the server decides when the window opens. And the time the card on Today names is the phone's own estimate, 72 hours from the moment Apple ended the subscription; the window that actually releases is counted on the server.