Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut

Re:Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details t... by thaumasiotes on Thursday June 18, 2020 @01:32PM (#23565427)

I'm interested in whether allowing Google Play In-app Billing is sufficient to meet the requirements (while also allowing external payment), or if the requirements are supposed to mandate Google Play In-app Billing as the sole possible method of payment. It's not clear from the policy page.

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Re:Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details t... by adrianmonk on Thursday June 18, 2020 @01:50PM (#23565638)

From the policy, emphasis mine: "MUST use Google Play In-app Billing as THE method of payment."

They could be clearer that those words are significant, but in practice this is what the policy is.

Which is what you'd expect because the whole point of mandating that form of payments is to take the 30% cut (for digital goods meant to be used primarily on Android devices within apps downloaded from the Android app store).

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Re:Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details t... by thaumasiotes on Sunday June 21, 2020 @03:51AM (#23590555)

> Which is what you'd expect because the whole point of mandating that form of payments is to take the 30% cut (for digital goods meant to be used primarily on Android devices within apps downloaded from the Android app store).

That may be a very large portion of the point, but it's not the whole point. For example, if you pay for additional functionality in an app using Google Play In-app Billing, then you can unlock that functionality again on any phone as long as you're signed in to the same Android account. If you paid externally, you can't do that.

Note that this directly lowers revenue from the 30% cut of in-app purchases, by removing some people's need to repurchase content they bought in the past but lost access to.

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Re:Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details t... by m-p-3 on Thursday June 18, 2020 @01:39PM (#23565505)

Some apps were temporarily delisted from the Google Play store because they dared adding a donation button that doesn't go through IAPs.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/google-pulls-open-source-android-...

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Re:Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details t... by thaumasiotes on Thursday June 18, 2020 @01:45PM (#23565586)

Other apps offer in-app purchases where you have the choice of in-app or external payment.

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