My experience with the App Store as well as iTunes is that it takes anywhere from 24 to 72 hours for the charge to hit my credit card — sometimes longer if the charge was on a weekend. Often two or more separate transactions/purchases will appear on the same charge. For example today I received a charge notice from Apple containing two separate App Store purchases and an iTunes store music purchase that took place over a three day period. Those hit my credit card as a single transaction.
Apparently Apple bundles their charges and submits them in a batch rather than submitting each charge individually. Given the way banks charge merchants for credit card purchases this makes a lot of sense financially.
Last edited by joemikeb; 09/09/11 02:36 AM. Reason: Upon re-reading this, even I could not follow my tortured phrasing