14 ms·

I'm really happy to see this moving forward, but I loathe the potential future landscape. Every fortune 500 is going to immediately pivot to their own IAP optio

I'm really happy to see this moving forward, but I loathe the potential future landscape. Every fortune 500 is going to immediately pivot to their own IAP options which will make my life harder compared to Apple Pay. I'm hoping with this movement, tools like Stripe/Paddle will develop some better IAP flows to make it as easy as possible. Adding my card information to 50 different in-app wallets does not sound appealing to me, despite the win for consumers and developers. I guess what I'm trying to say, is that it's unfortunate we have to make a tradeoff at all. Hopefully, this move will put downward pressure on Apple's payment infrastructure that incentivizes devs to keep using Apple payments because it's the same fee structure as whatever 3rd party they might move towards.

christopherwxyz 5y ago
Apple Pay has no bearing on IAP. You can use Apple Pay with Epic's IAP implementation.
- dannyw 5y ago
  apple pay expressly forbids being used for digital content delivered within apps.
  - JamesSwift 5y ago
    Right, but the only reason for that is it prevents circumvention. I would assume after this injunction they will allow using apple pay in order to re-capture some of that revenue.
  - diebeforei485 5y ago
    If they want to keep this rule, they can- but they're just losing out.
- maccard 5y ago
  Will I be able to use it with King's implementation, or my local pizza place's outsourced app? edit: I was instantly downvoted without any discussion, which doesn't add to the conversation. The reason I ask is because that's what the key value add is of Apple's IAP - I know that my payment method is accepted on the app store.
dannyw 5y ago
There are payment aggregators that charge about 30c and 3%: PayPal, Shop Pay, Google Pay, etc. And Apple Pay. There are also standards like Web Payments.
- valparaiso 5y ago
  Apple is still allowed to take fee during third-party payments. So as developer if you pay 3% to Stripe, now you pay 33% fee.
MAGZine 5y ago
On Android, I use Google Pay all of the time for in-app purchases, and it doesn't require Google to take 30%. It's just another payment processor. It often shows up beside "add a credit card" in apps. I use it to order food, pay for rideshare, buy tickets, etc.
- simonh 5y ago
  According to google, that is not correct. They levy a 30% fee on all Play Store transactions for apps and IAP. I've seen articles that say they are cutting the fee to 15% for businesses with under $1m revenue, but that's not what the support page says. https://support.google.com/paymentscenter/answer/7159343?hl=en-GB https://support.google.com/paymentscenter/answer/7159343?hl=... Buying physical goods and services may not count, in the same way that they don't count on the Apple App Store.
  - kllrnohj 5y ago
    It's a 30% fee if you use Play Store's IAP system. It's not a 30% fee to use Google Pay as a payment provider ( https://support.google.com/pay/merchants/answer/6288971?hl=en https://support.google.com/pay/merchants/answer/6288971?hl=e... ) Same distinction exists on Apple's side with IAP vs. Apple Pay. For example Apple Pay on the Web ( https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple_pay_on_the_web https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple_pay_on_the_w... ) doesn't take anywhere close to a 30% cut. In fact it, like Google Pay, is also free for merchants, who just have to pay the normal payment processor fees. https://squareup.com/us/en/townsquare/apple-pay-for-small-businesses-how-to-accept-it https://squareup.com/us/en/townsquare/apple-pay-for-small-bu...
    - nullifidian 5y ago
      To use Google Pay this way, you'll have to find a payment processor that handles local taxes and all that. As a developer from a country where Stripe isn't available, it's a significant hurdle.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  I agree. Literally makes no difference to me whatsoever. Even using a websites payment system is usually trivial because Android's autofill is pretty smart these days.
madeofpalk 5y ago
Just to be clear here (and this fact doesn't really detract from your point) - Apple Pay is very different to Apple's In App Purchases. Apple Pay can be used anyhere, and it could still be used if a company rolls their own purchase system on their website that they link to from the app. Apple only gets a very minor % cut of Apple Pay transactions, from the bank, compared to Apple IAP where Apple gets 30% from the developer. Besides, isn't the competition here what we want? Apple IAP are still easier, and probably will convert at a higher rate than pushing a user outside the app to do the payment on a website, so there's still incentives for developers to use them. If Apps switch away from IAP, then Apple is incentivised to actually compete (imagine that!!) and make something better that developers actively want to use. It says something about the state of competition where Netflix can just say "no, we no longer want people to sign up on an iPhone and give us money". That says they don't think IAP is good, and Apple should actually work on building something that companies want to use.
- maccard 5y ago
  > and it could still be used But it's not guaranteed to be, which is a huge loss for the app store IMO.
  - jackson1442 5y ago
    Agreed. I think a fair plan would be * lower IAP to 15% with an option to pay a higher dev license fee to lower it to maybe 7-10%. * require that any IAP has an _option_ to use Apple’s IAP system within day 20% of the offsite price * physical goods stay on the same system, but potentially offer some kind of carrot to implement Apple Pay
- draw_down 5y ago
  Who is we? I imagine app makers want this, but as a user I do not care to enter my credit card details just so they can save on their cut to Apple. It’s understandable from their POV, but not my problem.
- ApolloFortyNine 5y ago
  Apple would also likely drop their cut from 30% overnight. Maybe not to 3% like Paypal, but low enough where companies would have to think.
sabellito 5y ago
Apple Pay charges the banks a percentage per transaction on the credit card, despite not taking absolutely any of the risk in that operation. Plus a quarterly fee per card. Do you think the banks are going to foot that bill? Of course not: it's us, the consumers. Are you willing to have everything be a bit more expensive, for everyone, so that you, apple users, can have something a tiny bit more convenient?
- falcolas 5y ago
  Isn't that how any convenience works? Credit cards already increased the price of everything for the convenience of using credit cards, as an example. I'm old enough to remember there was once one price for cash, and another for credit cards.
  - josefresco 5y ago
    > I'm old enough to remember there was once one price for cash, and another for credit cards. Some businesses in my town still do this. When I see it, the only thing I think is "they must be committing light tax fraud". Maybe it's wrong, but I know what merchants pay for CC transactions and it doesn't justify the whining from business owners who have been accepting cards for decades and suddenly decided CC transactions were unprofitable because business is slumping /rant.
    - manquer 5y ago
      It is not tax fraud [1]. Merchants are violating the terms of CC provider. The merchant agreement explicitly forbids merchants to have different cash price from what is charge with the card. It is fairly common in geographies where CC providers can't litigate/enforce easily . It is not a penal crime, only a contract violation between two private parties and settled in arbitration/civil courts . [1] Such Merchants also may commit tax fraud if they don't declare the cash income for tax purposes, that however is not directly related to Credit Cards or payment medium and usually even if they do commit tax fraud, they don't pass on their tax benefits for GST/VAT or Income Tax (10+% in most countries) to the customer.
hyperpallium2 5y ago
Another possibility is Apple drops its take to reflect the value its payment service provides (including the benefit to users you mention).
coldcode 5y ago
As a user, I have zero desire to use some random payment gateway, using Apple makes my life easier, I can reasonably trust Apple not to let someone steal my money, how am I supposed to trust 50 different gateways? Also if people move away from giving Apple any money for the App Store, I expect the annual fee to increase to make up for it, and might Apple make you pay more if you don't use Apple's gateway? I don't see the ruling as forcing Apple to lose money. If I were Apple, I would have gone nuclear early on, and eliminated all % fees but made the annual fee per app of $X to each developer (whatever $ makes sense) and then you can collect money however you want. This would likely kill a lot of small app developers, but the big ones would not care. The ruling makes Epic a big winner, but everyone else loses in the long run, because Apple (and Google) will find a way to recover lost revenue. Some people also want to have 1000 app stores allowed. Good luck with that one... imagine having to build an app store just for your app, or supporting 25 different app stores.
- madeofpalk 5y ago
  > how am I supposed to trust 50 different gateways? Do you not buy things online currently? Do you not use Amazon, or Lyft, or Netflix, or Spotify?
  - gigatexal 5y ago
    I’d trust them a lot more if they used Apple Pay. Just saying.
  - barkerja 5y ago
    My concern is less about random one-off purchases but more the management of on-going subscriptions. Having Apple handle that, is a blessing, from a user perspective. I have a single place to manage all the random $1 - $10 subscriptions that I have, making it easy to change/cancel at any moment's notice, and from any device.
    - encryptluks2 5y ago
      What is to stop you from searching for services that still let you use Apple Pay? No one is stopping you from living in your tight-knit Apple world, but you seem discontent with the idea that people will no longer have to live there and would rather find ways to force them to stay there with you.
cush 5y ago
I highly doubt there will be any win for consumers. App developers probably aren't going to reduce their prices by 20%
- Osiris 5y ago
  That's a big assumption.
  - cush 5y ago
    Assuming a company will maximize profits is a big assumption to you?
- solarmist 5y ago
  No, and it wasn’t meant to. It was meant to let companies keep more and give Apple less. That’s all. In all likely hood things will get worse for consumers. I will definite not buy apps requiring custom payment platforms. Hopefully it’ll settle on stripe companies will offer multiple payment methods rather than trying to force their own. I look forward to it making Apple lower its IAP fees for everyone. I’d still like to use their infrastructure, but without the enormous fees (15% for small devs is still huge).
  - cush 5y ago
    Right. I bet this will be huge for companies like Stripe, Square, and Shopify.
- kllrnohj 5y ago
  The win would be that you're actually able to sign up for more things in the iOS ecosystem that you previously weren't able to, like Netflix or Spotify.
  - veilrap 5y ago
    You can already sign up through Safari on iOS to those services. And besides signing up to that sort of subscription is a one time thing.
radley 5y ago
> Adding my card information to 50 different in-app wallets does not sound appealing to me, despite the win for consumers and developers. Apple will probably pivot quickly to allowing you to use Apple Pay for this. A small commission and metadata is better than nothing at all.
6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
It would be hilarious if the end result was iOS users no longer being as valuable to app developers, if the ecosystem just starts to feel sketchy and people stop spending as freely on it. I don’t think it’s likely, but it feels plausible enough to lol at the idea.
- gumby 5y ago
  This doesn’t stop Apple from controlling which apps can be installed. It stops them from using a link to external payment as a criterion. I do think this will have some effect that you describe (e.g. perhaps Epic suffers a breach in their payment system) on the end user side but it’s not as bad as the android store situation. if anything it will make iOS users more attractive to devs as they can now keep a larger percentage of IAP sales. But when IAP costs less than 30% I expect all paid apps to go the IAP route.
41209 5y ago
Vote with your dollars. If App A requires you to use their payment gateway and App B uses apple pay, use App B. I imagine this will cause a sort of race to the bottom where apple will lower its own fees to match.
- makeitdouble 5y ago
  It feels ironic to ask customers to bear the burden to make big companies behave, in a thread about a court ruling regulating anti-competitive behavior.
  - chii 5y ago
    the burden has always been with the customer. But the fact that apple had been able to mandate the use of their IAP means the customer could not have exercised this "burden" until now!
    - makeitdouble 5y ago
      Customer rights are always balanced with corporate rights, and laws and rules are there to assure neither customers nor corporations act in detrimental ways to society. Customers can choose what they want to succeed, but none of the choices should have strong moral implications. I shouldn’t have to choose between destroying the env. or not, or support crushing rival businesses or workers rights or not, etc. So no, I don’t think it’s customers burden to have companies behave. Except if by “burden” you mean suing the companies collectively.
kkcorps 5y ago
I think it will ultimately boil down to 2-3 major payment gateways such as Stripe after initial chaotic 'every app trying to be force their own payment processor' phase
perfectstorm 5y ago
> Adding my card information to 50 different in-app wallets does not sound appealing to me, despite the win for consumers and developers. this is not an unresolvable issue though. Apple could force developers to make their payment option as the default payment option similar to how they forced devs to use Sign in with Apple (when they have third party login). Big companies like PayPal could provide an SDK which can be used by devs to complete trasaction similar to web. I could think of many more ways to solve this issue.
mrtksn 5y ago
As a Developer, I also don't look forward for integrating 50 frameworks for payment, deal with the limitations of each and every one and go through the bureaucracy of 180 countries for export compliance and taxes. When you sell something through Apple, depending on the location of your user, Apple will act as Agent or as a Commissionaire. This makes everything easy, even for a solo developer. Sold an in-game coins in France? Apple collected the money, paid the VAT to the French government. If you do this through your own means, you will need to establish a relationship with the French government so that you can pay them the VAT that you have to collect from your users. This will ultimately benefit large companies who can jump through the hops of managing all this, putting the independent developers in a disadvantaged position due to the high barrier of entry into improved margin(compared to Apple Store where everyone gets the same cut) payments. In some places you can be required to send a printed receipt to the user. It would not be fun to watch, let's say Zynga, collecting their low cost payments across all their portfolio by making users sign up once and having indie games instantly losing a payment or falling back to high commission options because users are tired of entering payment info for each game. Sad day for the little guy. Do you see independent Devs cheering for the %2-%3 commission or is it Epic, Netflix, Spotify who will benefit from this? Unless you do low margin commission work (like platform where you take a cut, i.e. online tutoring) the %30 commission is a non issue. Game crystals don't really have a cost, so %5 cut or %30 cut doesn't really matter that much. However, one company having access to the %5 and other not having access to it will change the landscape because the large company will be able to advertise more thanks to its better margins, wiping out the rest.
- donmcronald 5y ago
  I'd be stunned if everyone starts using niche payment providers. I think it's more likely the larger providers will step up. It'll be more along the lines of: Pay With --- Apple IAP ($1.43) - Stripe IAP ($1.06) - Paypal IAP ($1.06) That's also why Epic is disappointed. If Apple were forced to allow competing app stores, Epic is in a perfect position. They have app store tech with payments, commissions, etc. built in. If Apple's only forced to allow competing payment providers to become more prevalent, everyone thinks of Stripe, Paypal, etc. first. Epic probably has their own payment processing fees to cover, so they'll never be able to compete on price and that's where things are heading IMO.
WA 5y ago
Apple could start to compete on price for IAPs, so that devs favor Apple’s solution out of free choice, not because they have to.
superkuh 5y ago
When Apple announced it was introducing intentional security vulnerabilities to their Apple Pay platforms last month that was the signal that they were done trying to be a bank. I wonder if that decision was made knowing the likely outcome and downstream results of this case.
- aeontech 5y ago
  Wait, what intentional security vulnerabilities?
  - superkuh 5y ago
    The backdoor.
cma 5y ago
If there is competition allowed, maybe Apple lowers price and then you don't have much change in convenience.
lifty 5y ago
I think the judge didn’t specify how equal access needs to be given to alternatives means of payments. It’s very straightforward to design a payments SDK where card data gets stored on the phone and payment providers are forced to use that SDK so that all of them would absolutely the same experience as Apple pay. You can even force them to provide subscription cancellation like Apple does. But Apple wants you to believe that’s not possible, so probably they won’t do it.
majani 5y ago
The most likely move here is that Apple forces developers to put a drop down of payment options, with Apple Pay being the default. Same way Google did when Android was forced to offer a choice of default search engines
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
>I loathe the potential future landscape. Every fortune 500 is going to immediately pivot to their own IAP options which will make my life harder compared to Apple Pay. Then maybe Apple shouldn't have gotten greedy... This is the problem with major companies that think they can just control everything. Then when the government steps in they say what they were doing is anti-competitive and suddenly the consumers now have to bear the brunt of the negative aspect of full on competition. Had Apple just been reasonable and not charged egregious fees from the get go, this wouldn't have been an issue.
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
I'd prefer allowing apple to do whatever they want in their appstore, and forcing them to accept third party app installation, including alternative stores

christopherwxyz 5y ago

Apple Pay has no bearing on IAP. You can use Apple Pay with Epic's IAP implementation.

dannyw 5y ago
apple pay expressly forbids being used for digital content delivered within apps.
- JamesSwift 5y ago
  Right, but the only reason for that is it prevents circumvention. I would assume after this injunction they will allow using apple pay in order to re-capture some of that revenue.
- diebeforei485 5y ago
  If they want to keep this rule, they can- but they're just losing out.
maccard 5y ago
Will I be able to use it with King's implementation, or my local pizza place's outsourced app? edit: I was instantly downvoted without any discussion, which doesn't add to the conversation. The reason I ask is because that's what the key value add is of Apple's IAP - I know that my payment method is accepted on the app store.

dannyw 5y ago

There are payment aggregators that charge about 30c and 3%: PayPal, Shop Pay, Google Pay, etc. And Apple Pay. There are also standards like Web Payments.

valparaiso 5y ago
Apple is still allowed to take fee during third-party payments. So as developer if you pay 3% to Stripe, now you pay 33% fee.

MAGZine 5y ago

On Android, I use Google Pay all of the time for in-app purchases, and it doesn't require Google to take 30%. It's just another payment processor. It often shows up beside "add a credit card" in apps. I use it to order food, pay for rideshare, buy tickets, etc.

simonh 5y ago
According to google, that is not correct. They levy a 30% fee on all Play Store transactions for apps and IAP. I've seen articles that say they are cutting the fee to 15% for businesses with under $1m revenue, but that's not what the support page says. https://support.google.com/paymentscenter/answer/7159343?hl=en-GB https://support.google.com/paymentscenter/answer/7159343?hl=... Buying physical goods and services may not count, in the same way that they don't count on the Apple App Store.
- kllrnohj 5y ago
  It's a 30% fee if you use Play Store's IAP system. It's not a 30% fee to use Google Pay as a payment provider ( https://support.google.com/pay/merchants/answer/6288971?hl=en https://support.google.com/pay/merchants/answer/6288971?hl=e... ) Same distinction exists on Apple's side with IAP vs. Apple Pay. For example Apple Pay on the Web ( https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple_pay_on_the_web https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple_pay_on_the_w... ) doesn't take anywhere close to a 30% cut. In fact it, like Google Pay, is also free for merchants, who just have to pay the normal payment processor fees. https://squareup.com/us/en/townsquare/apple-pay-for-small-businesses-how-to-accept-it https://squareup.com/us/en/townsquare/apple-pay-for-small-bu...
  - nullifidian 5y ago
    To use Google Pay this way, you'll have to find a payment processor that handles local taxes and all that. As a developer from a country where Stripe isn't available, it's a significant hurdle.
mhh__ 5y ago
I agree. Literally makes no difference to me whatsoever. Even using a websites payment system is usually trivial because Android's autofill is pretty smart these days.

madeofpalk 5y ago

Just to be clear here (and this fact doesn't really detract from your point) - Apple Pay is very different to Apple's In App Purchases. Apple Pay can be used anyhere, and it could still be used if a company rolls their own purchase system on their website that they link to from the app. Apple only gets a very minor % cut of Apple Pay transactions, from the bank, compared to Apple IAP where Apple gets 30% from the developer. Besides, isn't the competition here what we want? Apple IAP are still easier, and probably will convert at a higher rate than pushing a user outside the app to do the payment on a website, so there's still incentives for developers to use them. If Apps switch away from IAP, then Apple is incentivised to actually compete (imagine that!!) and make something better that developers actively want to use. It says something about the state of competition where Netflix can just say "no, we no longer want people to sign up on an iPhone and give us money". That says they don't think IAP is good, and Apple should actually work on building something that companies want to use.

maccard 5y ago
> and it could still be used But it's not guaranteed to be, which is a huge loss for the app store IMO.
- jackson1442 5y ago
  Agreed. I think a fair plan would be * lower IAP to 15% with an option to pay a higher dev license fee to lower it to maybe 7-10%. * require that any IAP has an _option_ to use Apple’s IAP system within day 20% of the offsite price * physical goods stay on the same system, but potentially offer some kind of carrot to implement Apple Pay
draw_down 5y ago
Who is we? I imagine app makers want this, but as a user I do not care to enter my credit card details just so they can save on their cut to Apple. It’s understandable from their POV, but not my problem.
ApolloFortyNine 5y ago
Apple would also likely drop their cut from 30% overnight. Maybe not to 3% like Paypal, but low enough where companies would have to think.

sabellito 5y ago

Apple Pay charges the banks a percentage per transaction on the credit card, despite not taking absolutely any of the risk in that operation. Plus a quarterly fee per card. Do you think the banks are going to foot that bill? Of course not: it's us, the consumers. Are you willing to have everything be a bit more expensive, for everyone, so that you, apple users, can have something a tiny bit more convenient?

falcolas 5y ago
Isn't that how any convenience works? Credit cards already increased the price of everything for the convenience of using credit cards, as an example. I'm old enough to remember there was once one price for cash, and another for credit cards.
- josefresco 5y ago
  > I'm old enough to remember there was once one price for cash, and another for credit cards. Some businesses in my town still do this. When I see it, the only thing I think is "they must be committing light tax fraud". Maybe it's wrong, but I know what merchants pay for CC transactions and it doesn't justify the whining from business owners who have been accepting cards for decades and suddenly decided CC transactions were unprofitable because business is slumping /rant.
  - manquer 5y ago
    It is not tax fraud [1]. Merchants are violating the terms of CC provider. The merchant agreement explicitly forbids merchants to have different cash price from what is charge with the card. It is fairly common in geographies where CC providers can't litigate/enforce easily . It is not a penal crime, only a contract violation between two private parties and settled in arbitration/civil courts . [1] Such Merchants also may commit tax fraud if they don't declare the cash income for tax purposes, that however is not directly related to Credit Cards or payment medium and usually even if they do commit tax fraud, they don't pass on their tax benefits for GST/VAT or Income Tax (10+% in most countries) to the customer.

hyperpallium2 5y ago

Another possibility is Apple drops its take to reflect the value its payment service provides (including the benefit to users you mention).

coldcode 5y ago

As a user, I have zero desire to use some random payment gateway, using Apple makes my life easier, I can reasonably trust Apple not to let someone steal my money, how am I supposed to trust 50 different gateways? Also if people move away from giving Apple any money for the App Store, I expect the annual fee to increase to make up for it, and might Apple make you pay more if you don't use Apple's gateway? I don't see the ruling as forcing Apple to lose money. If I were Apple, I would have gone nuclear early on, and eliminated all % fees but made the annual fee per app of $X to each developer (whatever $ makes sense) and then you can collect money however you want. This would likely kill a lot of small app developers, but the big ones would not care. The ruling makes Epic a big winner, but everyone else loses in the long run, because Apple (and Google) will find a way to recover lost revenue. Some people also want to have 1000 app stores allowed. Good luck with that one... imagine having to build an app store just for your app, or supporting 25 different app stores.

madeofpalk 5y ago
> how am I supposed to trust 50 different gateways? Do you not buy things online currently? Do you not use Amazon, or Lyft, or Netflix, or Spotify?
- gigatexal 5y ago
  I’d trust them a lot more if they used Apple Pay. Just saying.
- barkerja 5y ago
  My concern is less about random one-off purchases but more the management of on-going subscriptions. Having Apple handle that, is a blessing, from a user perspective. I have a single place to manage all the random $1 - $10 subscriptions that I have, making it easy to change/cancel at any moment's notice, and from any device.
  - encryptluks2 5y ago
    What is to stop you from searching for services that still let you use Apple Pay? No one is stopping you from living in your tight-knit Apple world, but you seem discontent with the idea that people will no longer have to live there and would rather find ways to force them to stay there with you.

cush 5y ago

I highly doubt there will be any win for consumers. App developers probably aren't going to reduce their prices by 20%

Osiris 5y ago
That's a big assumption.
- cush 5y ago
  Assuming a company will maximize profits is a big assumption to you?
solarmist 5y ago
No, and it wasn’t meant to. It was meant to let companies keep more and give Apple less. That’s all. In all likely hood things will get worse for consumers. I will definite not buy apps requiring custom payment platforms. Hopefully it’ll settle on stripe companies will offer multiple payment methods rather than trying to force their own. I look forward to it making Apple lower its IAP fees for everyone. I’d still like to use their infrastructure, but without the enormous fees (15% for small devs is still huge).
- cush 5y ago
  Right. I bet this will be huge for companies like Stripe, Square, and Shopify.
kllrnohj 5y ago
The win would be that you're actually able to sign up for more things in the iOS ecosystem that you previously weren't able to, like Netflix or Spotify.
- veilrap 5y ago
  You can already sign up through Safari on iOS to those services. And besides signing up to that sort of subscription is a one time thing.

radley 5y ago

> Adding my card information to 50 different in-app wallets does not sound appealing to me, despite the win for consumers and developers. Apple will probably pivot quickly to allowing you to use Apple Pay for this. A small commission and metadata is better than nothing at all.

6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago

It would be hilarious if the end result was iOS users no longer being as valuable to app developers, if the ecosystem just starts to feel sketchy and people stop spending as freely on it. I don’t think it’s likely, but it feels plausible enough to lol at the idea.

gumby 5y ago
This doesn’t stop Apple from controlling which apps can be installed. It stops them from using a link to external payment as a criterion. I do think this will have some effect that you describe (e.g. perhaps Epic suffers a breach in their payment system) on the end user side but it’s not as bad as the android store situation. if anything it will make iOS users more attractive to devs as they can now keep a larger percentage of IAP sales. But when IAP costs less than 30% I expect all paid apps to go the IAP route.

41209 5y ago

Vote with your dollars. If App A requires you to use their payment gateway and App B uses apple pay, use App B. I imagine this will cause a sort of race to the bottom where apple will lower its own fees to match.

makeitdouble 5y ago
It feels ironic to ask customers to bear the burden to make big companies behave, in a thread about a court ruling regulating anti-competitive behavior.
- chii 5y ago
  the burden has always been with the customer. But the fact that apple had been able to mandate the use of their IAP means the customer could not have exercised this "burden" until now!
  - makeitdouble 5y ago
    Customer rights are always balanced with corporate rights, and laws and rules are there to assure neither customers nor corporations act in detrimental ways to society. Customers can choose what they want to succeed, but none of the choices should have strong moral implications. I shouldn’t have to choose between destroying the env. or not, or support crushing rival businesses or workers rights or not, etc. So no, I don’t think it’s customers burden to have companies behave. Except if by “burden” you mean suing the companies collectively.

kkcorps 5y ago

I think it will ultimately boil down to 2-3 major payment gateways such as Stripe after initial chaotic 'every app trying to be force their own payment processor' phase

perfectstorm 5y ago

> Adding my card information to 50 different in-app wallets does not sound appealing to me, despite the win for consumers and developers. this is not an unresolvable issue though. Apple could force developers to make their payment option as the default payment option similar to how they forced devs to use Sign in with Apple (when they have third party login). Big companies like PayPal could provide an SDK which can be used by devs to complete trasaction similar to web. I could think of many more ways to solve this issue.

mrtksn 5y ago

As a Developer, I also don't look forward for integrating 50 frameworks for payment, deal with the limitations of each and every one and go through the bureaucracy of 180 countries for export compliance and taxes. When you sell something through Apple, depending on the location of your user, Apple will act as Agent or as a Commissionaire. This makes everything easy, even for a solo developer. Sold an in-game coins in France? Apple collected the money, paid the VAT to the French government. If you do this through your own means, you will need to establish a relationship with the French government so that you can pay them the VAT that you have to collect from your users. This will ultimately benefit large companies who can jump through the hops of managing all this, putting the independent developers in a disadvantaged position due to the high barrier of entry into improved margin(compared to Apple Store where everyone gets the same cut) payments. In some places you can be required to send a printed receipt to the user. It would not be fun to watch, let's say Zynga, collecting their low cost payments across all their portfolio by making users sign up once and having indie games instantly losing a payment or falling back to high commission options because users are tired of entering payment info for each game. Sad day for the little guy. Do you see independent Devs cheering for the %2-%3 commission or is it Epic, Netflix, Spotify who will benefit from this? Unless you do low margin commission work (like platform where you take a cut, i.e. online tutoring) the %30 commission is a non issue. Game crystals don't really have a cost, so %5 cut or %30 cut doesn't really matter that much. However, one company having access to the %5 and other not having access to it will change the landscape because the large company will be able to advertise more thanks to its better margins, wiping out the rest.

donmcronald 5y ago
I'd be stunned if everyone starts using niche payment providers. I think it's more likely the larger providers will step up. It'll be more along the lines of: Pay With --- Apple IAP ($1.43) - Stripe IAP ($1.06) - Paypal IAP ($1.06) That's also why Epic is disappointed. If Apple were forced to allow competing app stores, Epic is in a perfect position. They have app store tech with payments, commissions, etc. built in. If Apple's only forced to allow competing payment providers to become more prevalent, everyone thinks of Stripe, Paypal, etc. first. Epic probably has their own payment processing fees to cover, so they'll never be able to compete on price and that's where things are heading IMO.

WA 5y ago

Apple could start to compete on price for IAPs, so that devs favor Apple’s solution out of free choice, not because they have to.

superkuh 5y ago

When Apple announced it was introducing intentional security vulnerabilities to their Apple Pay platforms last month that was the signal that they were done trying to be a bank. I wonder if that decision was made knowing the likely outcome and downstream results of this case.

aeontech 5y ago
Wait, what intentional security vulnerabilities?
- superkuh 5y ago
  The backdoor.

cma 5y ago

If there is competition allowed, maybe Apple lowers price and then you don't have much change in convenience.

lifty 5y ago

I think the judge didn’t specify how equal access needs to be given to alternatives means of payments. It’s very straightforward to design a payments SDK where card data gets stored on the phone and payment providers are forced to use that SDK so that all of them would absolutely the same experience as Apple pay. You can even force them to provide subscription cancellation like Apple does. But Apple wants you to believe that’s not possible, so probably they won’t do it.

majani 5y ago

The most likely move here is that Apple forces developers to put a drop down of payment options, with Apple Pay being the default. Same way Google did when Android was forced to offer a choice of default search engines

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago

>I loathe the potential future landscape. Every fortune 500 is going to immediately pivot to their own IAP options which will make my life harder compared to Apple Pay. Then maybe Apple shouldn't have gotten greedy... This is the problem with major companies that think they can just control everything. Then when the government steps in they say what they were doing is anti-competitive and suddenly the consumers now have to bear the brunt of the negative aspect of full on competition. Had Apple just been reasonable and not charged egregious fees from the get go, this wouldn't have been an issue.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

I'd prefer allowing apple to do whatever they want in their appstore, and forcing them to accept third party app installation, including alternative stores