The first sentence is true but incomplete, making the second wrong. For example, the Amazon app is highly likely to have people using their existing Amazon payment method. Companies like Stripe are going to offer their own SDKs just like they do for web payments. Apple’s offerings are quite polished so I don’t think they’ll fall out of favor but it’s going to reduce their profit margin and I’m sure the number of people who will use alternatives is much greater than zero.
On the other hand, it's really easy to imagine that you'd see something like “$9.99 IAP; $7.99 direct from Epic/Amazon/Google/Netflix/et al.”, especially when it's a company they already deal with and don't have a negative impression of.
The big question I'd have is whether that's possible or the other terms require price parity — and whether they'd be able to do something like offer bonus content, rewards clubs, etc. to nudge people toward their own store. I'd be somewhat surprised if, for example, Epic couldn't entice a fair number of people with some kind of in-game skin or other loot which they could argue has a resale value of $0.
It was so annoying I just gave up until my CC was locked.
This experience was definitely more expensive than using Apple’s services.
The reply email I got was at 9:07am EST, 'dispute' probably automatically puts your email head of queue for them.
Take this with a grain of salt, it seems excessive, I should probably have looked it up again :) But there definitely is some kind of strong incentive for merchants to avoid these, not just because it wastes time for them.
If only there was meaningful ISP competition in my area.
No? I don't know where you're located, but I'm not aware of any North American banks that offer anything of the sort. Typically the only thing you could do through your bank is dispute a charge after the fact and request a chargeback. The end of that process may or may not see the company in question left unable to charge you again, but it's not a "cancellation of recurring payment" process in any normal sense, and it's going to require some phone calls and form-filling.
Companies will famously decline to offer subscription cancellation options on their website, leaving consumers with the only option of calling them on the phone and facing a hard sell when attempting to cancel. Apple's subscription cancellation options are night-and-day better than the status quo.
I know the American system is bad, but it's not like the only system in the world. There are other ways of doing this, without going through Apple's closed ecosystem.
Although you can chargeback those payment, that's not really a cancellation. It's a last recourse type of stuff. I'm still subscribed and liable for whatever charge I have incurred. If I want to cancel Netflix or iCloud, I need to go there. So sure, if the payment fails your account will eventually be suspended but not necessarily cancelled.
Even Direct Debit are like that. I cancelled my Electricity DD by accident, but I still received the bill in the mail (at the time) and the electricity wasn't just cut.
Also in the UK, Paypal will allow to setting up subscription. Similarly you can cancel the subscription, but it is not a cancellation of the service. You need to go to whatever setup the subscription and unsubscribe there.
Apple system is a centralised cancellation of the service first, the fact that the payment are stopped is a consequence of cancelling the service. Not the other way around as with all the systems I listed.
But most of the commentators are talking about credit cards.
There is no equivalent system for credit cards.
Here in Czechia most periodic payments are paid through either direct debit or standing order. Direct debit payments require apriori permission (enabled for each recipient max sum per period), which could be revoked at any time.
The infuriating thing is that some american users think that since they have to endure crappy banking then everybody else on the planet must also be enduring the same thing, and that's not the case.
I must explicitly approve any direct debit subscription before it can withdraw money from my balance and I can kill a subscription from my home banking (I'm an Unicredit customer btw).
That's actually how I made sure my gym subscription was terminated for good.
If for nothing else, the angry Americans downvoted you to hell for this
Just a 30 euro/month subscription would quickly add up to amounts worth collecting, although I've even had a debt collector call me over a debt of 2 something euros.
If you, the customer, want to cancel a recurring payment and you're using ApplePay, it's one button and done.
If you're using 3rd party billing from $randomcompany, it usually works by you, the customer, trying to find who to call and spending a substantial portion of your time being badgered by customer retention people. They're set up to make it as difficult as possible because they know that they can make people give in if the effort is too high.
This is a huge part of the reason why companies want the second option - they want to own the customer, and for you to have to get permission from them to stop belonging to them.
I get it. You are doing your job. You have a script. You have to try and keep me. It's not gonna work on me. Skip to the part of the script where you begrudgingly give in and cancel the service for me and you can take your next call quickly.
Then you dispute the charge each time. It's a pain, but it's a bigger pain for them and costs them more than it does you. Especially once you've documented with that receipt of a registered letter.
https://www.paypal.com/va/smarthelp/article/how-do-i-cancel-...
The process can be done in the PayPal app, or on any web browser. It is just as easy as Apple's process, and PayPal doesn't charge 30%.
PayPal is not a bank, however.
And if someone else tries to charge that card, then I know who leaked it.
Done.
I suspect if you called up your bank and asked to block recurring payments from a specific merchant, they could do it. It’s just not advertised very well, and the implementation aren’t always granular enough (block a merchant using Stripe for example, can result in all Stripe payments being blocked).
If you cancel Netflix that way, Netflix isn't told. They will just realise the payment failed and block your account until you upgrade your payment details.
Apple system cancel the subscription, just like if you go on Netflix account and cancel. The blocking of the payment just happen as a consequence of the subscription to the service being cancelled.
Of course maybe time changed. Like shop returns 20 years ago, it was badly seen to pick load of stuff and bring most of the stuff back. Nowadays shops expect it and during Sales period they will ask you to do it that way rather than jam the few fitting rooms.
High quality bait right here.
I believe it just covers automatic renewals, which are illegial.
The WSJ needs to clean up their act. Offer better info to subscribers? The rest of us arn't going to pay. And I know it's difficult business. Figure out something newsboys besides trickery?
Fire that MBA in charge of subscriptions.
Pretty clearly a cash grab against those subscribers who aren't watching the notices + auto-billing closely...
Stripe etc. do not care about competing for consumer favor. Apple does. As far as any large company is on the consumer's side, Apple is, because they need me to buy another iPhone more than they need me to buy a subscription to somebody else's app, even at a 30% vig.
Making it harder for users to cancel their recurring payment is a feature, it’s customer retention, the only choice you’ll have is whether a given site or payment processor is so egregious that you will forego use of the service entirely rather than take the risk.
When you call via a TTS gateway, a certified transcriptionist for the deaf or (now) a computer program that does speech recognition will transcribe what is said by the other party to text so you can read it and speak out loud what you type exactly. There’s quite a few regulations around this service, although I’m sure it’s developed since I last looked into it.
There are also special phones or phone apps many deaf people have that do live captioning. CaptionCall is one common brand.
e.g.: If I can pay for say Guardian subscription either:
1. via their website/app and use it on iPhone, android, PC, etc; or
2. Pay for same subscription via Apple subscription and ONLY have it on my iPhone
- that's a HUGE diff, and one that I have been extremely peeved off to discover in the past :-/. It only took one such experience to permanently sour me on Apply subscriptions.
Tim Cook said at the trial they could integrate a separate payment API into Apple's subscriptions. Alternatively, Apple could check the cancel method during app review - so that's not a reason to allow Apple's payment monopoly.
Assume Apple dropped to 15% and the competition was 10% - then it would be 9.99 IAP, 9.63 on Amaozon/Stripe/Netflix, which probably wouldn't be worth the consumer confusion.
5% price cut: -$3.5 B
15% price cut: -$10.5 B
... I think all bets are on the table as to how Apple will respond, given the magnitude of what we're talking about.
https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees
A micropayment is 5% + $0.09. For a $0.99 purchase, this is about 15%.
I would expect other payment processors to be similar.
This also leads to the question of "how do you maintain the in app purchases?" Is it an account on a website that has 100% uptime? Does it work for solo games when there's no network connectivity?
This works for Epic (big company, lots of payment processing already). It doesn't work for SmallGamerInc that would find that they'd need to do a bunch of other stuff to get it working that incurs more costs than what Apple offers.
SumUp wants just 1.95% flat for online payments. I would expect other payment processors to do even better with some shopping around.
---
For the US ( https://support.sumup.com/hc/en-us/articles/115008338687-Pri... )
> When you take payments over the phone or via payment link, you’ll pay 3.25% + $0.15 per remote transaction.
That decision changes register my Netflix account, that I don‘t remember doing, nor do I remember what interface I used to do it ––it was three computers and two phones ago–– but if another decision says I could save 20% every month, I’d munster the energy to get off the couch.
If the US mandated that you need to provide equivalent means of subscription and unsubscription with equal ease of use that would be one thing, but we do not live in that world.
Even if a developer makes subscriptions easy to manage today, without tie-in to Apple's infrastructure, they could change that process on a whim.
Instead I suggest playing back a pre-recorded sales pitch for a relevant trade union: The workers won’t suffer from bleeding ears and the bosses might actually care.
In my opinion, it should be as easy to unsubscribe as it is to subscribe. I interpret anything else as consumer-hostile. It's very strange coming from NY Times ... I know they find it hard to finance journalism nowadays, but dark patterns are never the answer.
But, that is only the NYTimes. My guess is that the original hypothesis holds true for others; I doubt JFax has improved.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/companies-mu...
This makes the practice even more egregious as you know the website has the ability to allow cancellations they just choose not to enable it for people living in other states.
Perhaps look at it this way: I'm pretty OK with paying 30% to not pay 200% and, kinda more importantly, not to feel upset and angry later for forgetting a dark-patterned subscription dinging me again. If that's an edge case, y'all are wrong.
Maybe Apple can straitjacket them properly. "You must use XYZ API in iOS/MacOS and you must support one-click cancellation via a standard process." But I think the dark-pattern farmers who are angry about this would be angry about that, too.
I don't want to pay an extra 30%, and have that 30% taken away from the devs who actually deserve the money, because _some_ might make it hard to cancel.
Most would likely just have a Paypal button same as 90% of websites if that makes you feel better.
And it doesn't make me feel better, because that's exactly the hellworld we have outside of iOS, but thanks!
If that's all they'd done from the beginning this ruling would not have happened.
Apple wants to control the access to a very significant portion of the user base?
Fine, but then they'll act like a lawmaker-light and in many (western) societies that means you get some burdens and responsibilities piled upon you by the original lawmakers.
Im not sure Apple want's to do that. By not restricting the 3rd party payments there is more of a case for using Apple's payment processor so you can cancel easier.
Does Apple not support paying in arbitrary websites like Google Pay?
Apple Pay is one of those payment options, but if you have to trust a bunch of third parties to properly manage your information the specific form of payment doesn't matter much.
The mobile app payment market hasn't been competitive for a decade, so Apple has never had to compete with companies that are more efficient than they are, and can offer the same or better service for less than a 30% cut.
However Apple does vet apps and focus on security somewhat (altho Google's project 0 seems to do a better job at finding bugs for Apple), however 30% is far too much even for what Apple are offering their customers.
In an ideal world, Apple customers need to be told: "you will be charged extra buying through Apple to help pay for the protections/quality that our platform offers you".
However, Apple explicitly disallows both telling users that they're being charged more and why, and that they could get it cheaper elsewhere.
Regardless of whether Apple are still allowed to charge x%, the first step it to get Apple to allow developers to tell the customer about other payment options and for Apple to explain to their customers why it costs more, then customers can make the decision for themselves.
Apple is free to not make developer tools anymore, that's their choice. Nobody is forcing them to. They do it b/c apps make the iPhone better. In fact an iPhone without apps is pretty useless.
Amusingly, when you tap on an Amazon link to a Kindle book in iOS Safari, it redirects to the app (because of the Amazon URL), but then the app notices that it’s a Kindle book page and redirects back to Safari.
1. taking a 30% hit on its iOS sales, 2. forgoing them, or 3. raise its prices of eBook by 30% on its main app.
There are enough few enough iOS sales, and free sample downloads lead to enough conversion on the website later to go for 2.
Apple doesn’t make the same claim on physical goods.
So then we have two possibilities.
One, you're an outlier and nobody else cares.
Two, many users care about this enough to refuse payment systems that don't have it. In that case there will be a market for another payment system that has easy cancellations but charges ~5% instead of 30%.
Either way nobody pays 30% anymore.
That line of reasoning holds when all else is equal, which it almost never is when it comes to apps. No matter how passionate anyone is about payment systems, it’s still extremely unlikely to rise to become the determining factor when deciding to install an app. If a person wants to play Fortnite with their friends, but doesn’t like the payment system, they don’t magically get to choose a Fortnite clone with a payment system that’s more to their liking.
I’d happily pay for such a system if I could *trust* them to continue acting in my interest by not leaking my details or interest and actually cancelling subscriptions without pushback from the provider (say, will the free version still grant access to my files).
I don’t know many players that I would trust with that and that are big enough to not be intimidated by providers.
That trust can be misplaced: God knows I trusted the NYTimes for being a nice company, but their unsubscription process was horrific, demanding to call from a US phone number (guess what: it’s really hard when you are not based in the US) and then refusing to cancel a non-US subscription if you do…
After dealing with that too much, I genuinely only trust Apple to do it consistently. I might trust Google too; I’m hoping that data scientist at Facebook know to model the brand impact on retention to argue it’s financially preferable to let people cancel… Even companies where I lead the analytics team and where I made the case passionate for instant cancellations, it was such an uphill battle. And it was lost again as soon as they thought I turned my back, because of some middle-manager obsessed with their short-term number.
Is Amazon was allowed to run a store on iOS, Android, and Fire devices, and if you bought an app you were guaranteed the equivalent version on other devices if it existed, I think there would be a lot of incentive for people to use it. I wouldn't necessarily prefer Amazon be the entity running it in the end, but they're probably best poised to do so with customer trust.
> Apple does a really good job of warning me, I feel, and centralizing subscription cancellation etc., and that's huge.
If there was actual competition between stores, this could be an item of competition, and a minimum acceptable level of support for this might emerge in the front runners. Amazon is already pretty good at making customers happy, this might be something they'd happily take on (and don't they already do subscriptions for magazines?).
The whole problem is that people keep looking at this as "Apple may be bad at X, but they do Y really well and I don't want to lose that" when they should be looking at it as "Apple is bad at X, maybe if they get some competition they'll do better at X, and Y will still be done well by them".
I can't understand why anyone would assume Apple having competition on their platform would make them worse. They would actually have to address problems for once otherwise worry about losing people to other stores, not entire phone ecosystems which require multiple hundreds of dollars and losing access to all your purchases.
If some company is really trying to get out of the Apple controlled system not because of costs but because they really want access to your personal info or to make it hard to stop paying them, maybe they should be allowed to leave and they can get less customers and hopefully change or die. Chances are they're trying to figure out the info using other methods right now anyways.
Which is fine for flashlight apps but as someone else put it heee, you don’t have the option of choosing another fortnite clone with a better payment provider - all your friends are on fortnite and you can either play with them or not.
Sijilaely, had the court forced Apple to open up “third party app stores” via sideloading, you would have Facebook and others immediately block web access via safari and Force all iOS users to install a full-permissions rootkit like they already got busted for. And sure you would have the choice to not talk with your friends via Facebook ever again, but network effect is a real thing.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-google-...
That might be the case with a market that doesn't already have a competitor offering it, but Apple has already positioned themselves as pro consumer with fairly well known differences. Any competitor store on iOS will compared and contrasted to the App Store. I have no idea why you think any dark patterns that Apple specifically has rules and procedures to combat won't be obvious points of comparison, and won't be something competed over.
> Which is fine for flashlight apps but as someone else put it heee, you don’t have the option of choosing another fortnite clone with a better payment provider - all your friends are on fortnite and you can either play with them or not.
Or, Apple is forced to compete on price, and their cut goes down, and Fortnite is available through the App Store at a slight markup (that is, not 30%) or through the Epic Store without that markup. And if Epic chooses not to list on the App Store, well maybe they lose customers for that choice, but it's the customers choice.
If you actually care about combating bad behavior of companies with regard to private data, put your efforts behind legislation or regulation. Markets can't completely deal with that, and a single market definitely isn't doing so. All you're supporting is a system where those with more money get to pay for the rights we all have. There's no reason someone should have to opt into the expensive Apple ecosystem when a $50 whatever phone should have the same safeguards. Letting Apple prevent competition doesn't help that situation at all. I would argue it makes it worse (with competition, we might see better options arise).
> Force all iOS users to install a full-permissions rootkit
Allowing a separate store does not mean allowing rootkits. A sane permissions system where the store is not the only defense over what is actually allowed would be better for everyone involved, even iOS App Store users.
If Apple wants to say certain permissions just plain aren't supported, even for App Store apps, there's nothing wrong with that, and it would keep the whole phone more secure.
In the end, if Facebook really wants to pull something like that, let them try, and let them face the backlash for it. Ultimately, Apple is not a good steward for your interests, because your interests only matter to them as much as they align with their profit motives, and there are places where they definitely do not align, such as App Store pricing. Just because you're happy with what Apple says they're doing right now, and perhaps you actually are coming out ahead (but it's important to consider that Apple advertises where they help you, but they hardly advertise where they hurt you, so there may be harms you're not yet aware of), but there's no guarantee that the balance will stay that way or that you can even accurately assess it.
Apple having competition isn't a problem. That competition selling me to that competition's actual customers--enabling difficulties and dark patterns that Apple does not--is a problem.
I like Stripe as an app developer because I pick them as a seller; they're not there to serve my customer and are there to serve me. I am reasonably confident that Apple's there to serve me at least as much as an app developer because I as a buyer picked Apple. For B2C interactions where I'm the C, I want the platform on my side.
Why would your selection of Stripe ever put the platform on my side? Why should I want this as a consumer? The money's already a rounding error, the time and stress aren't. If the end result here is "you must use Apple's subscription system, must honor one-click cancellations through a centralized clearinghouse, and sure you can use your payment provider on the other hand", then that's great. Anything else is worse than the status quo ante.
Then don't use that competition? It's not like Apple is special here. They've developed a reputation for not doing that, which is what you're relying on for them to not do it. Any other competitor could develop a similar reputation if they chose to compete on that level.
> For B2C interactions where I'm the C, I want the platform on my side.
And in what way is any of that untrue or different if a different store is allowed to compete on iOS.
> Why would your selection of Stripe ever put the platform on my side?
Why is the options Apple pay or Stripe? Why isn't it App Store + Apple pay or Some other store + stripe or some other service that attempts to put the same constraints in place?
For whatever reason, people only seem to see this issue in terms of straw man arguments. There is nothing unique about any one aspect of Apple or the services they run that some other service couldn't attempt to do the same or better, and maybe that might actually make Apple's version evolve to be better than it is, so I'm confused why people are so against this.
Stripe doesn't care about having me do anything. The business using Stripe is their customer. I am an incidental aspect of their arrangement with that business and if that business decides to be an asshole, Stripe just shrugs.
Apple doesn't.
I mean this as politely as I can: that you're writing this off as a strawman argument sounds like deliberate misunderstanding.
I've been very clear that I'm talking about a separate store on the platform, while you're talking specifically about payment processing. Both are somewhat related to the discussion (with payment processing be more directly relevant to this ruling). To be clear, I don't mind a store getting between me and who I'm paying, but only if there's a level of choice involved that means people have a way to opt out of a third party being involved if they want. If that's at a store level and Apple requires all payments go through Apple pay and a different store does not, I'm fine with that. I feel confident that very quickly what we'd see is that the premium on payments like that, whether for an app or a recurring service/subscription, would quickly drop to a more representative cost of what it takes to offer that feature, just like the store cut would likely change to something more competitive with other stores, based on what it offers.
That you like this feature now and see it as a benefit is not surprising. Because of Apple's position, they're able to fold it into their store fees, which traditionally developers and publishers have not felt they could charge additional for to make up the cost. But that is not something that can be relied on, especially for services and subscriptions, which are generally more cost aligned than application pricing. Epic, for example, is/was charging App Store users that additional amount over the base cost, and Apple's rules were such that they weren't even necessarily allowed to tell people that Apple was causing them to be overcharged.
Consider a world where the status quo shifts, and for services and subscriptions it's more the norm to see things charged extra when bought through App Stores that charge quite a bit over market rate for payment processing. If you had to for example pay an additional 25% for services and subscriptions, would you think it was quite as good a deal? For small things, probably. For large things, maybe that's less likely? If you pay $100/mo for some service, maybe $30/mo to protect your name is a bit steep?
All I can say is that I think we're far more likely to have one or more good providers that will offer this service one multiple platform years from now if we actually open this up and let people put their money where they care. I don't think Apple can be trusted to be stewards of what's best for us overall. Like any public company they are beholden to their board and the stockholders, and the mandate for increased profits. That right now you benefit from their interests does not mean you are guaranteed to do so in the future. Relying on corporate interests to align with our own instead of promoting a system where what we want could be provided by any competitor that wants to provide is seems a poor way forward, to me.
Ex. if a 3rd party makes their own subscription management that somehow allows you to cancel subscriptions faster than Apple does, maybe that is more convenient, but now you have to figure out which of your services work with that provider and likely would have to use both as neither could offer you everything you wanted. I understand how the idea of competition for revenue could incentivize better management from the likes of Apple and others but I just don't think the market for this will be competitive at all.
Another example of place Apple is failing (though I know of no alternatives), I went to a restaurant, the waiter told me I could pay by scanning the QR code in the receipt. This took me to a webpage that allowed me to pay via Apple Pay, but there was a message "Your email will be share and used to send ads". No way to opt out. I hadn't entered any email address, Apple was just going to give it to them. I closed the page and paid cash but was frustrated that Apple gives out email addresses.
I’m surprised that Apple didn‘t mandate the hashed email solution that they advertised when introducing Apple Pay. That felt an effective solution to your concern. It’s likely that the developper had to include that copy (honestly, that cantor is almost fresh these days) but forgot to mention that this could be hashed if you chose to do so in your Apple Pay settings.
I have subscriptions and accounts all over the web, and I have never have had an issue canceling anything via a website - the only exception being the NYTimes and all its dark patterns.
Out of probably 10+ subscriptions we use (Netflix, Spotify, HBO, Hulu, etc), I have only ever had one through the Apple system, and it's not even active anymore.
Just using a password manager and having a separate email for junk/mail from various accounts keeps me in the loop on what accounts I still have laying around. The Apple subscription section is the absolute last place I look when I don't know where a charge came from.
Idk if Paypal lets you cancel subscriptions directly through them, but they could certainly implement that if there’s demand. The same goes for any other payment company that wants a piece of this new and enormous opportunity.
If you're going through PayPal ( https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees ), a $0.99 micro transaction is $5% + 0.09. That's $0.14 which is about 15%. It also means you get things like PayPal deciding to not release the money it holds for some reason.
At that point, for the small developer, it appears to be a wash for how much you're making. Yea, this goes down if you've got bigger IAPs. It also goes up if its an international transaction.
Furthermore, it means that you (the developer) needs to manage your own IAP system. Website with 100% uptime? User accounts and passwords (more friction to creating the account to purchase the IAP)? Network connectivity issues (can a solo game be played off network)?
This is their business model, they've already shown they'll stop at nothing to put these practices in place, obviously this is just the next step in pushing it further.
Managing subscriptions is separate from payment processing. Apple could still have a central hub letting the user know what is going on. Apple grabbing 30% of sales for a digital only product is not something most people support.
But for buying stuff from trustworthy providers, like Netflix or Amazon, etc, then why should I give Apple their cut? They give me 0 extra benefits, as I don't need protection from those companies. They're as likely to mess with me as Apple.
The most powerful force in play here is consumer indifference, which Apple have been relying upon.
I think you’re also underestimating the degree to which normal people hesitate before putting in credit card details on a web form - almost everyone has heard stories about difficult cancellation processes, stolen card databases, etc. Services like ApplePay offer assurances that almost certainly result in sales which otherwise would not happen, so I’d expect this to consolidate on a few companies (Amazon, Stripe, Google if they can stay on message for more than a promotion cycle) which are relatively trusted as intermediaries.
If you don’t believe me, ask a non-tech-sector family member what they think Apple Pay is.
Who said anything about first principles? I’m describing real problems which are well known in the industry – and having been involved since the mid-90s I wouldn’t say that “indifferent and clueless” is remotely accurate. I know more than a few people who’ve had to replace cards because a small vendor was compromised and, unsurprisingly, they favor Apple/Google/Amazon now.
Most of the non-tech sector people I know think Apple Pay is what they use to buy coffee, lunch, groceries, etc. It’s not just tech sector people using it — if you look at their usage numbers, the tech sector just isn’t that big.
Example: Apple takes a flat 30% fee while Stripe takes (IIRC) 0.3 + Y% (when Y much lower than 30). So a cheap app will pay the same or less with Apple, but an expensive one will lose a lot with Apple. I know not all expensive apps are quality ones, but at least this model will be economical now.
Explain to the user that a $10 / month in-app transaction is $13 or $15 because Apple wants 30-50% of every transaction, and I am pretty sure most Apple users will recognize this as plain extortion and not appreciate it.
Apple’s decision to force subscription services to use their payment system and charge exactly the same cut as they did for a single transaction app purchase was obnoxious. Sure, charge a fee for allowing access into the walled garden-but 30%? That’s 30% of $10-$15. Every month. They had the right to do that of course but that’s such an infuriating move.
Some companies didn’t play ball at all and just hoped users would connect the dots between the app’s home screen that was featureless except for a two form fields and seeking out the service in a browser. Even a link to a support portal would need to land on a version of your portal that you created to strip out any links that could, eventually, lead (indirectly) to a page where your customers could sign up for your service.
Some other companies just accepted it and then charged 30% more in-app for a subscription.
It’s probably fair to say some if not all of this is outdated. They may not charge as much and relaxed the requirements. But Apple is still Apple. I’m glad governments are moving the needle on this. Despite loving many of their products the way they behave and communicate is so conceited and nearly devoid of any humility or capability to deal constructively with mistakes or errors.
Any iOS devs care to weigh in? Apple's system could just as easily be a godawful mess. No personal experience but I've seen people online complaining about how StoreKit sucks.
They've had in-app purchases since 2009 and no competitive pressure from other SDKs, because they can block them with app store policy instead of needing to offer a better product. That sounds like an easy environment for it to become an afterthought; the people using it have no choice in the matter if they want to be on the App Store.
On the code side you have to run your own backend purchase server because there is a ton of subscription information that is only relayed to the server (Cancellations, upgrades, downgrades, cross grades, billing problems, etc.), as the app has no way to know directly (Until SK2.) Services like RevenueCat help small devs deal with this, but then you have another cut out of your paycheck.
Things like price testing require more backend setup because Apple offers no way for an app to grab product information from themselves (You have to know every identifier, there is no way to just request "all available IAPs" via StoreKit.)
So basically, there is a ton of room for improvement on the dev side, and a lot of easy wins for someone like Stripe to capitalize on.
As a user, I don't have many complaints, other than not having an easy way to request a refund, other than finding the App Store email address and pleading your case. It should be something you can do via your purchases screen directly. As a dev, not being able to issue customer refunds sucks, as many users will think you are dismissing them by saying, "You've got to ask apple for a refund."
I’ll frequently not buy from sites that want registration and card info because of the hassle.
I’ll probably end up using things I already have accounts with (amazon, Google, steam) but will never buy from apps that require me to sign up with them to buy stuff. I already hate registering with companies to play games.
Basically I'd expect successful competitors with Apple to be companies which do the same. Abusive companies aren't going to be popular but I suspect Stripe, Shopify, Amazon, etc. could convince a fair number of people that they're no worse on that regard and better in some other way.
My worry with the "anti-steering" requirement being removed is that every company will redirect me back to their own website with their own payment system, and I'll have to manage all of them individually, or phone up their call center to try and get anything cancelled.
Easy to avoid by not subscribing to anything, but every app seems to be trending that way.
But also just take a look at the number of subscriptions we all have these days - Entertainment stuff (Spotify/Music, Netflix/streaming, HBO, Xbox Live), Donations (Charity, Github Sponsors), Software (Password managers, backup solutions, Jetbrains, Adobe), Membership (Prime/equivalent, internet, mobile), ... yada yada yada. It's a huge unwieldy list.
I have tried my best to keep at least all the app ones in iTunes/Apple (in my case - weather app, dating apps, productivity apps). My alternative is I just won't subscribe. I'm sick of the subscription economy as it is. This would be the last straw. If Bumble tells me I have to give them my cc info and have to call them to cancel (like NYT does), I just won't subscribe.
Essentially I'm subscribed to some of these apps because I'm not being forced against my will to stay subscribed using terms and conditions that are outrageous (looking at Adobe with its annual contract).
Let’s be honest, my Amazon payments will never fit into Apple’s bubble. The things is, I prefer to deal with Amazon than Apple. Same for things like Patreon, I don’t think they do, but I can’t imagine Apple getting a cut of each donation.
So to me the status quo was just the worst outcome.
It's a good way to centralize and easily cancel subscriptions, and it handles more than just Apple's overpriced ecosystem. PayPal's site is not perfect, but it's still much more usable than Apple's subscription management running on iTunes' corpse.
Getting a Google Voice number requires a Google account. Creating a Google account requires a phone number (which you must maintain access to, because they will periodically reverify it).
If its a Gacha or something, you then are getting some in-game currency, that you then have to redeem for the item you wanted. The extra steps are really annoying, and if its a company I trust, it would be easier to give them my info to smoothen things up (big if, mind you)
Let's say you want to sell your original product on Amazon, but you also have your own fulfillment center and a storefront on your website. What if Amazon removed you from their store, because your instruction manual included a URL to your website, and it was against the rules to tell your customers that you accepted payment outside of Amazon's ecosystem in any way.
That's what Apple did with software, though suspiciously they left the largest, most litigious companies like Amazon alone, because they've been free to use their own payment systems for in-app purchases of physical products for years now.
This is also why I mention Amazon a lot: while I favor ApplePay for purchases, there's a 0% chance that I want to use it for my Kindle purchases because simply owning a Kindle means I've already committed to use Amazon to buy content for it.
I am also an irrational cheap skate so if I see Apple around but more, I won't subscribe at all.
My guess is that a lot of people see it that way.
This is all stuff Apple can design around or codify into their approval standards, obviously. Which is why it's imperative they act on their own so they can dictate how it shakes out rather than having a poorly considered implementation forced on them by regulators.
the apple developer ecosystem (with regards to subscriptions and app purchases) in my experience has been quite awful for a multi trillion dollar company. really bad API docs, really poor experience around understanding what is even happening in their black box. i'm honestly astonished at how "unfinished" the whole experience feels. something like Stripe is on another level
Merchant using letsencrypt need to validate domain every 3 by hand. And that "feature" even exists on their document.
There are externalities to each choice, of course, but the correct answer is, actually, the obvious one. Apple is not in the right on this one, from any perspective. If they care about their users and developers: they'd drop the commission. If they cared about their revenue and investors: they'd drop the commission.
Fortnite's protest should have been the wake-up call for the people dead asleep at the wheel of their App Store division. Epic very likely would have stayed on the App Store indefinitely at 15%; the issue has metastasized, and now Tim Sweeny has taken the stance of "alternate payment frameworks or nothing", but I'd bet every dollar I've got that if Fortnite's IAPs were at 15% before they left, they'd still be on the App Store. Everything is about money at the end of the day; Apple doubled-down, so now Epic had to double-down.
Imagine a commission so reasonable that Netflix could sell its subscriptions there; that Amazon could sell books; that Fortnite could (maybe) return, and the next triple-A gaming hit that hadn't even considered mobile because of the commissions. That's the money Apple is leaving on the table. These companies WANT their products to be easy to buy; nothing makes that easier than App Store IAPs. There's a number that could work for everyone, but Apple comes to every negotiating table with their fingers plugged in their ears yelling "nah nah nah I can't hear you 30%"
Apple's App Store policies throughout the 2010s will go down in history as the biggest blunder big tech has ever made. I am absolutely certain of this. They're throwing away an empire that could last a hundred years, because they think they're invincible. Tim Cook literally said, under oath, "we don't know how profitable the App Store is". They've publicized proudly about how they employ five hundred whole people to do hundreds of thousands of App Reviews. This is not malice or greed; its complete and total incompetence. Why are investors not OUTRAGED at Apple's leadership?!
This isn’t about fees and it’s not even (just) about Apple - Apple is just a relatively unsympathetic defendant for them to fire their opening shot. As noted, Microsoft fees are 30%, Google fees are 30%, etc, and yet Apple was singled out (with those companies actually jumping onto the lawsuit against Apple too).
This is, more generally, about prying the Apple platform open, and other similar platforms like it. Remember, Epic didn’t start this suit over anti-steering clauses, the real goal here was epic getting their own third party store, which means they don’t have to pass an Apple review before being able to request permissions that let them mine data/etc. Thats a way bigger prize than (checks notes) 30% of 12 million dollars.
This was never about fairness for all developers, it was always Epic wanting a bigger slice of the pie factory.
I wonder how much of this hard-headedness is on the App Store division and how much of it is Tim. Or just Apple Hubris.
The only way the 30% would make sense is if publishing on the App Store was free. But of course it isn't, you need to pay a yearly fee for that.
Add to that the fact that App Store purchases are riddled with fake cards and usually draw a much higher MDR from merchant accounts. If people are rejoicing that they can just hook up their Stripe and world will be rainbows, they are in for a shut down email pretty soon.
I, as a customer, don't want to pay many companies directly. The prime example is any news publication. There are many I'd happily pay for except (like gym memberships it seems) it can be incredibly difficult to cancel. I won't reward that model so they get none of my money.
I'm fine paying companies directly, but I don't want them to manage my subscriptions
The _buyer_ experience with Apple's IAP is mostly good, but I would argue that the developer experience is downright horrible. Working with subscriptions and IAP receipts is clunky. You can only use one of about 100 SKUs, which makes it difficult to offer discounts and customized pricing at the higher price tiers, where the gaps between amounts are quite large. Until recently, it wasn't even possible for developers to issue refunds!
Even if Stripe charged 30%, I would choose them every time over Apple's IAP.
I have implemented subscription using many APIs (stripe, PayPal, processout, Apple, Amazon, Android...) And Apple is by far the shittiest.
And you cannot even refund your own customers...
I was looking at StoreKit earlier today and saw https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/transacti... as part of it. I realize that this is new with iOS 15... but there's something there now.
This is from yesterday https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/10/apples-storekit-2-simplifi...
> “They’ve made the process a bit smoother, but developers still can’t initiate refunds or cancellations themselves,” notes RevenueCat CEO Jacob Eiting, whose company provides tools to app developers to manage their in-app purchases. “It’s a step in the right direction, but could actually lead to more confusion between developers and consumers about who is responsible for issuing refunds.”
> In other words, because the forms are now going to be more accessible from inside the app, the customer may believe the developer is handling the refund process when, really, Apple continues to do so.
Yeah, maybe that's even worse...
Note that Apple is charging 15% for small developers ( https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/apple-announces-app-s... ) - not 30%.
Stripe's rates are $0.30 + 3% ( https://stripe.com/pricing ). Paypal is a quite a bit better at $0.09 + 5% for micropayments.
For a $0.99 IAP through Apple (with all of the associated infrastructure to handle IAP) that would cost $0.15 to the developer.
That same purchase through Stripe would cost $0.33... and the developer would need to provide some way to handle IAP. Paypal would be the same as through Apple.
That "set up some way to handle IAP" is going to be interesting too.
Defaults matter. Based on what they've shared so far developers must qualify for and choose to enroll in this system. In other words, Apple isn't charging 15% for small businesses, they're charging 15% for Small Business Program participants. That's an important distinction.
It's also worth mentioning that if you have transferred an app to or from your developer account for any reason, you're not eligible for this program. https://developer.apple.com/app-store/small-business-program...
The central evil of all of this has been the bundling of everything together, so that nothing can be independently valued.
"30% is fair, in exchange for all the things we provide you", etc.
Edit: As an example, in the US this is mandated for home mortgages. "These are services you can shop for" + "These are charges for each service". Any platform having to offer the equivalent of a Closing Disclosure / HUD-1 doesn't seem like such a bad world.
Historically line itemization makes it harder, not easier, for users to understand what they're being charged for. Compare Verizon versus Google fi statements, for example. The complexity hidden in all those fees confuses people, and let's Verizon (and others) claim monthly fees are X in ads, then listing that fee as X, then tacking on a lot of line items that make the actual payment much more.
Be careful what you wish for.
Why? Apple has been arguing that iPhone, iOS, Safari and App stores are so tightly integrated in that they are in fact an essentially indivisible single business. With this logic, all the revenue comes from iPhone/iPad hardware can subsidize operation costs for App store right?
Or, in a sentence: you can't claim something is indivisible, and then charge for its pieces separately and at separate times.
Your point is probably that developers and customers are two separate groups, and there's a history of making a thing free to customers (the App Store) while charging vendors (developers) for the privilege.
I just don't see how your "then" follows from your "if" at all! The integration of iOS and the App Store is from a user's perspective. No one seriously believes that Apple is claiming that the two things are literally physically impossible to split up technically. You might as well be arguing that it boggles the mind for the calculator app to be free, but for iCloud storage to cost money!
Except Apple in the court does. That is the exact stance why they cannot allow third party stores and browser engines since those are technically a part of indivisible OS services. Of course, this is obviously BS and inconsistent to many other Apple's business practice, anyway it's their official legal stance in nearly all of its antitrust lawsuits.
Oh, so every iOS users need to understand all the app review policy and TOS before spending their money on iOS ecosystem. Otherwise they cannot complain about what Apple's doing? Customer protection and antitrust regulation don't work like that.
> This is nothing like moving to another city or country.
Why? The main reason of using alternative store is mainly having cheaper apps and contents, usually several cents per each. And you're suggesting that I need to spend ~$1000 upfront cost as well as giving up all the apps and contents that I purchased in iOS? I think it's pretty similar to "moving to other cities", which illustrates how classic monopolist lock-in strategy works.
Instead, what people want, is for users who already own their own phone, to be able to do what they want with it, without an uninvolved 3rd party (Apple) getting in the way of transactions made between the user and the developer.
This is none of Apple's business they don't need to provide me any services(if i don't use their payment) if my user uses 5 IAP transactions a day or one.
As a developer I get to choose which model makes more sense for me and in turn pass on benefits of that to my user, right now there is no choice and this ruling allows only for that.
10% to handle the entire subscription/checkout process isn't bad at all, especially if it means that many of your customers can check out without entering any billing details.
Oh, right. The app store doesn't also do that?
The App Store has effectively infinite space. There are so many products and search is so broken that it's extremely difficult for users to discover your product.
Rather than comparing the experience to brick and mortar stores a more apt comparison would be to throw your products in a landfill, junkyard, or extremely large flea market and expect your users to find them. Would you pay high commissions to a junkyard for tossing your product in a pile "somewhere in the back"?
These are separate concepts.
OK but like, dark patterns exist and everybody knows users don’t like them. Developers use them anyway because they’re profitable. Yeah I guess you feel bad but the bags of money help dry those tears.
If there’s no chance of customers altering their decision )because you have something exclusive for which there is no substitute, or no good substitute) then there’s very little downside to dark patterns. And this is true even for something as banal as a newspaper subscription, where you would think there’s a lot of substitutes.
Any exclusive niche employing dark patterns makes an opportunity for an honest broker to come in and clean house.
Evil will triumph because good is dumb.
Payment processors and their networks are infinitely more complex and resource intensive than a mobile app distribution store, and their commissions tend to only be between 1% and 3% per transaction.
First of all - citation? Have you run a mutli-billion$$ App Store with hundreds of millions of individual customers, and the associated support channels etc?
Secondly, Apple is also providing those 'infinitely more complex' payment processing services on top of the App Store, so even if true, your argument is kinda moot.
For a US company and a US customer, that's 4.99% + $0.09 for each transaction. For a $0.99 transaction, that's 15% of the total.
> Call this function from account settings or a help menu to enable customers to request a refund for an in-app purchase within your app. When you call this function, the system displays a refund sheet with the customer’s purchase details and list of reason codes for the customer to choose from.
Most of the revenue Apple makes is from top apps and top brands, which is why they had no problem cutting the rates to 15% for the little guys already, the little guys are a tiny slice of the overall pie.
There is no way this will overall increase Apple's revenue, especially as companies concentrate on building solid 'Apple fee avoidance' funnels. Not to mention that many pay-for apps will very likely convert to free to download and then push the user to pay for the app externally to the app store as a 'one time lifetime subscription'.
This is going to cause a massive revenue loss for Apple if it stands.
Speak for yourself. I am from India, and we already have much better payment systems then Apple's:
1. All our debit / credit card are chip-based.
2. No card transaction can happen without the PIN. Some online transactions require both a PIN and a password.
3. For any online transactions, the payment processors often support the following options to pay - using debit / credit card, directly from our bank account (Net Banking with 2FA), Unified Payments Interface (UPI) ( https://www.npci.org.in/what-we-do/upi/product-overview ) which is another online digital payment mode that even allows for easy peer to peer payment between parties and umpteen online / mobile digital wallets.
4. Best of all, using any of these payment modes won't allow Apple any access to my financial data.
(And naturally Apple supports none of these popular modes in India because otherwise Apple would come under closer scrutiny from indian regulators.)
As far as App Store commissions are considered, from a developer's perspective Apple can go screw themselves if they want anything more than what competing payment processors charge. (Like Epic, I am disappointed that consumer rights weren't considered at all - ultimately it is us owners / users of Apple devices that pay these 30%-50% or whatever commission!)
I have an app like that that's already done and in the app store. We would love to take advantage of Apple Pay for subscriptions, but the 30% tax means we literally can't. We'd have to jack our prices so much that the cost becomes prohibitive, and if we take the 30% hit ourselves we'd basically be giving things away for free.
If the cost would drop to somewhere in the 5-15% range it's a whole new ballgame.
EDIT: For anyone who's wondering – we basically use the same strategy as Netflix et al, the app is useless unless you already have an account and in order to get one you have to sign up elsewhere. We don't have links or information on how to sign up, you have to just magically end up on our site or have an account added through one of our partners.
Apple only takes credit card in most countries. This makes sense in countries where credit cards are the norm, but not in countries where credit cards are not the norm and far from ubiquitous.
OTOH, external payment providers (eg: stripe) often integrate with local payment mechanism.
In my case, local payment mechanisms are far simpler, easier, and secure. Using a credit card requires me moving money into my Wise account before I can pay anything, adding so many extra steps. Not to mention that I have to remember to transfer money every month before subscriptions get charged.
Plus, the whole online payment system with credit cards is utterly unsafe: share your "secret number" with all merchants and pray none of them leak it or overcharge you.
cutting prices that drastically will most certainly not increase revenue. in a competitive market, pricing is near/at the price elasticity equilibrium. in a monopoly situation, pricing is much beyond that point, in the company's favor. you're suggesting they move prices in the opposite direction, which would most certainly impact revenue negatively. note that these are not nascent, high growth markets where the growth rate can overwhelm the price elasticity dynamics.
the court should be mandating broad, open, and honest competition, not dictating prices, which is will practically always get wrong in some way. price is a signal for how competitive a market is, not a lever to drive competition.
I’m much more likely to subscribe to something via the Apple store than I am through any in-app service.
FWIW, the streaming services I want easy unsubscribe options are typicall $5-$8 / month and yes, I would pay 30% more for a better experience.
They have this brilliant Apple Pay workflow that's almost completely unused in IAP — it bothered me that we couldn't just use Apple Pay to purchase a Spotify subscription directly in-app. Perhaps soon we'll see this.
I have been paying for things online for decades now and never once have I used Apple's payment system. I assure you, plenty of us will use payments not provided by the fruit company.
And to have to just through countless hoops to unsubscribe.
Looking at you, annoyingly hard to unsubscribe from, New-York Times.
Including Apple's
The silent majority – the users – will always prefer to go through Apple. But HN seems to be full of user-hostile devs (as you can tell by looking at all the downvoted comments here who speak from a user’s PoV) who only hear the companies that want to break down the garden’s walls to prey upon users.
Relaxing that model will lead to better apps overall because finally you can invest and charge appropriately, you just need to trust yourself to not pay in apps you don't trust.
We just don't want to be vilified and forced to bow to the giants because of a few bad apples
No. All Apple has to do is amplify a few horror stories, for example people using [any competitor]’s renewable subscriptions and not being able to unsubscribe. Or amplify a story of a virus/malware on, hopefully, Epic or Steam.
This is certainly what makes you choose a MORE expensive product, that’s certainly why I buy my fire extinguishers $200 instead of $50 for the same model (but a trusted source). Apple should be able to keep a more expensive margin based on reputation alone.
1. Cut down the IAP commission to 15% for everyone. 2. Cut down the commission to 5% for those who pay for a Business Account, say at $5,000 a year.
The thing is no customer wants to use any company's half-assed bug-riddled purchase or subscription system. Every iOS and macOS user will prefer to use the Apple system. All Apple has to do is to make the rates competitive enough, that after considering building their own purchases system, factoring in sales tax and VAT, most developers will happily just opt for Apple's system if the rates make sense. Many people are putting up with 30% already — bringing the rates down to something reasonable with an upgrade path to put them on par with payment processors like Stripe (with VAT and Billing and Radar) or Paddle will just increase revenues for them.
The moment they drop rates and ease restrictions apps that are not being built because of these rules will get built, and these apps will gladly pay the market rate of 5% to 10% for a full service payments system.