4 ms·

I feel that the condition Apple puts on app devs to not indicate to customers in any way that 30% of their purchase is going to Apple is the most problematic. I

I feel that the condition Apple puts on app devs to not indicate to customers in any way that 30% of their purchase is going to Apple is the most problematic. It shows that Apple knows their cut is too high, and customers won't stand for this rate if they knew what they were paying for. If they genuinely believe their service is worth 30%, they should be confident about it, let users understand the break up of their bill. Truly insane levels of monopoly on display here.

onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
Is this in-place-of or on-top-of the credit card transaction fees? A lot of in-app purchases are for less than $3. Doesn't Apple need to pay Visa a $0.35 transaction fee, plus ~3% of the purchase price. On a < $3 purchase, that's 15%+ already.
- drrotmos 6y ago
  In-place-of
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- hboon 6y ago
  Apple bundles purchases fit each account and don’t charges cards immediately so in practice, the average is much lower.
- mijamo 6y ago
  Apple must have a better deal than that with Visa, big actors with have a much better deal than what you commonly see, with no fixed fee. I think they must pay less than 1. 5% transaction fee with no lower limit or fixed addition.
- username90 6y ago
  Transaction fees are just 0.3% in Europe since levying a 3% tax on every purchase is insane and hurts progress. You should probably go after those companies in USA as well. Basically in Europe it is illegal to levy an unreasonable tax for generic services like this. The same applies to Apple.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
    So is Apple not allowed to take a 30% cut in Europe? How about Amazon for Kindle books? Are digital distributers allowed to charge 30%? Where does Europe draw this line?
drrotmos 6y ago
As a counterpoint, those 30% account for more than just processing fees. Why should the average consumer be tasked with deciding whether a given cut is reasonable without knowing what that cut actually goes to?
- luckylion 6y ago
  That's a bit like saying "the citizenry shouldn't know how we spend the money collected by taxes", isn't it? The users wouldn't need to decide whether it's reasonable, they could just ignore it. Not allowing information to get to the user is a different thing though.
  - drrotmos 6y ago
    I don't think so. It's more akin to not posting a sign saying "our landlord charges us $5,000/month in rent" in a brick-and-mortar shop. At the end of the day there are costs associated with doing business online. If Facebook was able to have their own payment processing pipeline, and still charged no cut, that's them processing payments at a loss, and subsidizing it with other income streams. The Apple cut doesn't just cover payment processing though, (in Apple's opinion at least) it also covers the costs of maintaining the app store, reviewing apps, developer tooling etc. There's really two separate questions here, is 30% as a cut for the entire App Store ecosystem reasonable, and is it reasonable to charge a cut paying for the entire ecosystem to someone who really is only "getting" the payment processing parts of it. In a sense, when Facebook is providing this kind of platform, they're essentially competing with the App Store. Instead of whomever is running "Jasper's Cooking Class" making a cooking class streaming app and posting it to the App Store platform, they're able to use the Facebook platform to provide the same service. Because this becomes sort of a platform-in-a-platform, it starts getting expensive pretty quickly, because you have to pay for both. Of course, the people behind "Jasper's Cooking Class" (presumably Jasper himself) are probably not in a position to make an app and posting it to the App Store, so Facebook providing a lower barrier to entry is probably a good thing for the market as a whole, but they're not doing it out of the good of their hearts, it's still a very deliberate business decision, aimed at keeping people on Facebook, where the users are monetized in other ways.

onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago

Is this in-place-of or on-top-of the credit card transaction fees? A lot of in-app purchases are for less than $3. Doesn't Apple need to pay Visa a $0.35 transaction fee, plus ~3% of the purchase price. On a < $3 purchase, that's 15%+ already.

drrotmos 6y ago
In-place-of
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hboon 6y ago
Apple bundles purchases fit each account and don’t charges cards immediately so in practice, the average is much lower.
mijamo 6y ago
Apple must have a better deal than that with Visa, big actors with have a much better deal than what you commonly see, with no fixed fee. I think they must pay less than 1. 5% transaction fee with no lower limit or fixed addition.
username90 6y ago
Transaction fees are just 0.3% in Europe since levying a 3% tax on every purchase is insane and hurts progress. You should probably go after those companies in USA as well. Basically in Europe it is illegal to levy an unreasonable tax for generic services like this. The same applies to Apple.
- onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
  So is Apple not allowed to take a 30% cut in Europe? How about Amazon for Kindle books? Are digital distributers allowed to charge 30%? Where does Europe draw this line?

drrotmos 6y ago

As a counterpoint, those 30% account for more than just processing fees. Why should the average consumer be tasked with deciding whether a given cut is reasonable without knowing what that cut actually goes to?

luckylion 6y ago
That's a bit like saying "the citizenry shouldn't know how we spend the money collected by taxes", isn't it? The users wouldn't need to decide whether it's reasonable, they could just ignore it. Not allowing information to get to the user is a different thing though.
- drrotmos 6y ago
  I don't think so. It's more akin to not posting a sign saying "our landlord charges us $5,000/month in rent" in a brick-and-mortar shop. At the end of the day there are costs associated with doing business online. If Facebook was able to have their own payment processing pipeline, and still charged no cut, that's them processing payments at a loss, and subsidizing it with other income streams. The Apple cut doesn't just cover payment processing though, (in Apple's opinion at least) it also covers the costs of maintaining the app store, reviewing apps, developer tooling etc. There's really two separate questions here, is 30% as a cut for the entire App Store ecosystem reasonable, and is it reasonable to charge a cut paying for the entire ecosystem to someone who really is only "getting" the payment processing parts of it. In a sense, when Facebook is providing this kind of platform, they're essentially competing with the App Store. Instead of whomever is running "Jasper's Cooking Class" making a cooking class streaming app and posting it to the App Store platform, they're able to use the Facebook platform to provide the same service. Because this becomes sort of a platform-in-a-platform, it starts getting expensive pretty quickly, because you have to pay for both. Of course, the people behind "Jasper's Cooking Class" (presumably Jasper himself) are probably not in a position to make an app and posting it to the App Store, so Facebook providing a lower barrier to entry is probably a good thing for the market as a whole, but they're not doing it out of the good of their hearts, it's still a very deliberate business decision, aimed at keeping people on Facebook, where the users are monetized in other ways.