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service account with owner rights has insufficient permissions

Freshalmost 5 years ago
Mar 14, 20260 views
Confidence Score79%
79%

Problem

Hello, I finally managed to make a successful api call with this npm package; `publisher.inappproducts.list({ ...` returns the expected result and everything is great. But when I go for: [code block] It always returns the same error: The current user has insufficient permissions to perform the requested operation. Assuming that: - The current user is a service account with the highest possible permissions granted in both the developer console and the google play console. (including "view financial data") - The project in the google developer console is linked to the app in the google play console. - The `packageName`, `subscriptionId` and `token` parameters sent are valid. What could possibly be missing? Is a refresh_token needed with service accounts? Could there be discrepancy between the permissions shown in the UI and the actual permissions granted to the service account? Does the service account need to "accept" the invitation to be a "owner"? Is there a way to list the service account's permissions through the API? Here is the code I use for authentication: [code block] Environment details - OS: OSX 10.14 (Mojave) - Node.js version: 8.11.4 - npm version: 5.6.0 - `googleapis` version: 34.0.0 Thanks for making it down here.

Error Output

error:
**The current user has insufficient permissions to perform the requested operation.**

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1 Fix

Canonical Fix
High Confidence Fix
76% confidence90% success rate8 verificationsLast verified Mar 14, 2026

Solution: service account with owner rights has insufficient permissions

Low Risk

Just to inform what's happening with my case. From the time when I setup full privileges to my service account to actual propagating the permissions from Google, it takes 24 hours. So if someone gives admin access to his/her own service account it should wait at least one day in order to verify In-App purchase from the server side. It will be great if Google representative document this behavior i

76

Trust Score

8 verifications

90% success
  1. 1

    Just to inform what's happening with my case. From the time when I setup full pr

    Just to inform what's happening with my case. From the time when I setup full privileges to my service account to actual propagating the permissions from Google, it takes 24 hours. So if someone gives admin access to his/her own service account it should wait at least one day in order to verify In-App purchase from the server side. It will be great if Google representative document this behavior in order to be more transparent for further users.

Validation

Resolved in googleapis/google-api-nodejs-client GitHub issue #1382. Community reactions: 65 upvotes.

Verification Summary

Worked: 8
Partial: 1
Failed: 1
Last verified Mar 14, 2026

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Environment

Submitted by

AC

Alex Chen

2450 rep

Tags

google-apioauthsdktype:-bugexternalpriority:-p2api:-androidpublisher