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Companies will want it, but I'm not sure users will. Apple does a really good job of warning me, I feel, and centralizing subscription cancellation etc., and th

Companies will want it, but I'm not sure users will. Apple does a really good job of warning me, I feel, and centralizing subscription cancellation etc., and that's huge. Like, if I have to go to your app--or worse, your website--to cancel a subscription? I'm gonna just not use your stuff, because I'm going to forget about it until you whack me for another year or whatever.

travoc 5y ago
You would really pay a 30% premium on all your digital purchases just to be warned about a subscription expiring next year? You might be an edge case.
- eropple 5y ago
  Third-party payment providers who I don't select, not being answerable to me as a platform holder, are incentivized to make it hard for me to cancel. Apple doesn't do that. I have better things to worry about than to track this stuff down and I desperately want to think about fewer stupid things in my life. Subscription management is solved and stupid. 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.
  - ApolloFortyNine 5y ago
    >If that's an edge case, y'all are wrong. 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.
    - eropple 5y ago
      Devs "deserving the money" is a curious statement. I don't deserve dark patterns and stress in exchange for a subscription, do I? And it doesn't make me feel better, because that's exactly the hellworld we have outside of iOS, but thanks!
  - Vespasian 5y ago
    Apple can still enforce in their rules the ability to cancel from one place 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.
  - gwoplock 5y ago
    > 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. 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.
    - paulmd 5y ago
      This is my hope as well. This ruling explicitly pushed back against the attacks on App Store review and other Store policies - and as such they can still leverage that into a requirement to implement some API that allows one click control of recurring subscriptions.
- deleted 5y ago
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- 0xf8 5y ago
  I am also more than ok to pay that premium for the benefit of centralized subscription management. an additional instance of the “edge case”.
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  A fair amount of companies makes their subscription cancellation actively hostile in an effort to not get people to do it. To give an example, though you can subscribe online, the NYT requires you to call during only certain hours to a customer service line where you get badgered and questioned like you’re trying to cancel a cable subscription. 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.
  - ilikehurdles 5y ago
    This is exactly the example that's been on my mind. Had I known how horrible NYT's unsubscription process is, I would have never subscribed in the first place. I'm sure they extracted an extra month or two out of me because of the friction they introduce, so in management's eyes that's probably a win. I will never use NYT again in the future, but I think a big label letting users know an app isn't using iCloud payments could go a long way to cautioning users about a user-hostile experience. 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.
    - tracker1 5y ago
      Similar opinion for XM... Would never sign up again without a generated card number that is only good for a single charge. I only wanted to cancel one radio of 3 I had at the time. By the third 40+m wait after mysteriously "disconnected" after they couldn't talk me out of it, I cancelled the whole thing.
      - IX-103 5y ago
        Don't get me started on XM. Starting the second year after I bought a car they were calling me several times a week. It took a few years of "No" and blocking any number in my area code that isn't in my contacts (my phone number is not local) for it to stop. Then I brought my car to the dealership to have some recall handled, and the calls have started again....
- ahurmazda 5y ago
  Another edge case here. For now I trust apple with my credit cards (a lot) more than a bunch of smarmy payment processors (somehow I magically get subscribed to a bunch of things when I use the latter)
  - Dayshine 5y ago
    Why on earth wouldn't you be able to use Apple to pay (with the normal 2-3% transaction fee)? Does Apple not support paying in arbitrary websites like Google Pay?
    - djrogers 5y ago
      Yes they do support that.
    - hraedon 5y ago
      Two separate things at play here. Parent is saying they trust Apple to manage their payment options, and since third parties have to go through Apple they don't have to trust a bunch of individual companies to do things right. 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.
  - diebeforei485 5y ago
    Developers can use payment methods that don't require credit card data to touch their servers (eg. Stripe, PayPal, Shopify).
- Spivak 5y ago
  I mean everyone's assuming that non-IAP subscriptions are going to be 30% cheaper but I don't really buy it. If the market has proven that someone will pay $10 for a thing, suddenly offering it for $7 seems like a bad business move.
  - wvenable 5y ago
    Many apps already have non-Apple-taxed pricing. So they can just keep price consistency without losing 30%.
    - whoisburbansky 5y ago
      Which apps do this?
      - hoveringhen 5y ago
        YouTube Music / Premium does this if I'm not wrong
        whoisburbansky 5y ago
        Huh, I was under the impression that the App Store guidelines didn’t let you do that, but maybe that doesn’t apply if you’re Google.
  - jclardy 5y ago
    Most likely Apple subs will increase in price. This was the case for Netflix/Spotify for a while until Apple banned the practice (7.99 direct, 9.99 via IAP.)
    - benhurmarcel 5y ago
      It’s still the case for Youtube Premium and Dropbox for example.
  - NineStarPoint 5y ago
- dntrkv 5y ago
  That 30% covers a lot more than just processing payments.
  - weixiyen 5y ago
    I assume by that you mean the developer tools to create apps in the first place. 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.
    - fillipvt 5y ago
      So you are saying they have to? Otherwise the iPhone would be useless.
- deleted 5y ago
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- dylan604 5y ago
  You're assuming that the Epics of the world will actually lower their rates the 30%. Epic could just as easily keep the same prices, but now make that extra. That's the issue I have with Epic's arguments. They might lower the rates by a percent to entice people over to their system, but over time pull the cable company routine and just up the rates each time it renews or new version.
  - elondaits 5y ago
    It’s almost impossible to analyze Epic’s rates “objectively”. Fortnite is free, but you can pay for in-game currency (V-Bucks) with which you buy cosmetics. You can buy V-Bucks directly (discounted in large amounts), get them through a monthly subscription slightly cheaper, or get a limited amount by playing (more if you buy a season pass which also includes cosmetics). BTW: Cosmetics are EXTREMELY overpriced, because you pay for “exclusivity” (think like USD 20+ for a fully accessorized skin with no effects beyond cosmetic). Even though Epic can claim it lowered the cost of V-Bucks in its store, you can only used them to pay for a small daily selection of arbitrarily overpriced cosmetics that Epic puts in its in-game store… so how much is a V-Buck worth? Nobody knows, and Epic can tweak it by making skins more or less detailed, or by giving away more or less V-Bucks to players and subscribers.
- uberduper 5y ago
  What makes you so sure it would be 30%? Somewhere a middleman gets their cut. Why wouldn't bigCorp just make you use their payment system at the same price without allowing purchases via Apple at all?
- roamerz 5y ago
  Do you really think that the digital purchase cost would be 30% lower if you bought it directly through the vendor? The edge case would be that buying directly though the vendor would actually be 30% less.
- danudey 5y ago
  You think the people who move to their own payment systems are going to drop their prices by 30%, when instead they could keep them the same and make 30% more revenue?
- kjreact 5y ago
  You think that you’ll get a 30% discount by subscribing via an external website? More likely they’ll give you a small discount to entice you and pocket the difference.
  - moogly 5y ago
    Wouldn't it be better if that money went to the actual creator instead of a greedy middleman though? Apple will be fine. They have more money than they know what to do with. Literally. Steve Jobs even asked Warren Buffett WTF to do with their hoard, and that was over 10 years ago now.
    - kjreact 5y ago
      Truthfully, aren’t the only developers who are really affected by this decision mega-corporations anyways? Epic had $5B in revenues in 2020. Should I feel indignant which greedy mega corp gets more money? Apple already lowered the commission to 15% for small developers (under $1M annually) where the additional income really matters.
      - smoldesu 5y ago
        Apple's refusal to allow alternative payment methods is (and has been) the issue. They can take 99% for all I care, but their smug refusal to allow alternative payment methods all but confirms that it's a ripoff.
burlesona 5y ago
It doesn’t really matter what customers want. If companies have an option to offer a lesser user experience but keep more revenue, they’ll nearly always take it. The only exception would be if “underdog apps” start seeing “we still use Apple IAP” as a selling point.
skrtskrt 5y ago
Shopify's "Shop Pay" has already introduced a seamless payment interaction across many sites without a need for a separate account or to trust so many people with payment info - the idea that something similar wouldn't be created and get adoption for subscriptions on mobile seems highly unlikely. 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.
bogwog 5y ago
Im sure every random app wont be rolling their own payment system. Paypal’s transaction fees for example are significantly lower than Apple (less than 4% vs Apple’s 30%), and millions of users already have a Paypal account, so they could buy your product without having to create an account or enter payment info. 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.
- cto_of_antifa 5y ago
  paypal actually does, i used it the other day. they've given their web app a lot of polish recently.
- shagie 5y ago
  If you're making less than $1M/y, its 15% ( https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/apple-announces-app-store-small-business-program/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/apple-announces-app-s... ) If you're going through PayPal ( https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees 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)?
acdha 5y ago
You'll get no argument from me that Apple's system is pretty good from a consumer standpoint — that's the primary reason why I predicted that it'd remain popular. It's really nice knowing that you can nuke a subscription without getting some dark patterns trying to talk you out of it. 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.
- NikolaNovak 5y ago
  The other part is, what do the Apple subscription cover in terms of platforms? 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.
  - djrogers 5y ago
    That's not a shortcoming of Apple's system - every subscription I have using IAP has a way to tie to to an existing or new account for use on other devices. If the Guardian decided not to do that, that's kinda crappy and 100% on them.
  - biztos 5y ago
    I ended up canceling a magazine subscription I’d done with Apple, because there was no way to use my Apple credentials on the web site. It was app-only, and the app was crap compared to the web version. I might resubscribe but… friction…
  - TYPE_FASTER 5y ago
layer8 5y ago
One drawback of the current situation is that for example you can’t purchase ebooks through the iOS Kindle app (because Amazon can’t/won’t let Apple take their 30% cut there), and the app can’t even link to the corresponding product page on Amazon. If the new ruling enables such purchases and linking, then as a consumer I’m very much in favor of it.
- dylan604 5y ago
  But yet you can by directly from Amazon in their app without using Apple. How can Apple say that they cannot sell eBooks directly on Kindle app, but allow direct sells from the retail store?
  - djrogers 5y ago
    You can buy physical goods in the Amazon app, but not digital books.
  - layer8 5y ago
    You can’t buy Kindle books with the iOS Amazon app. It only allows to download a free sample. 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.
  - jclardy 5y ago
    It's because then Apple Books would have to compete with the Kindle app on fair terms. IE Apple is being anti-competitive and giving their own app an advantage. This is basically a part of what the original lawsuit was about.
  - bertil 5y ago
    Apple doesn’t ban sales of eBook, but claims that those are software and would apply a 30% processing fee to them like on all virtual goods. They also demand the price to be comparable to other sources, so Amazon has to decide between 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.
webmobdev 5y ago
> Companies will want it, but I'm not sure users will. 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.
yyyk 5y ago
Apple doesn't need to monopolize payment to centralize subscription cancellation. More importantly, Apple's fee structure prefers cheaper trashy apps over expansive to produce quality apps. I hope users will feel the difference with an overall better app selection. 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.
- paulmd 5y ago
  There is absolutely no causal mechanism where reducing fees by 5-10% will magically produce an improvement in app quality and variety.
  - yyyk 5y ago
    It's called 'incentives'. Not a difficult concept, admittedly a bit foreign to the centrally managed iOS ecosystem.
tracker1 5y ago
Worse still, is having to re-install a removed application when the renewal hit in order to then kill your account that was created during first run of said app.
FridgeSeal 5y ago
After using Apple Pay, centralising my subscriptions, and things like Apple-managed IAP’s I’ve little desire to go back to handing my card details over to n different apps, with varying and unknown degrees of payment security. Centralising the subscriptions is worth it alone.
rhizome 5y ago
People/apps that use alternate payment SDKs aren't going to care how difficult it is to unsubscribe, and very few people (citation needed) care enough to look into an app's cancellation flow before buying in.
- paulmd 5y ago
  It’s worse than that. Developers will actually seek out alternate payment providers that allow dark patterns. The whole reason dark patterns exist in the first place is because they’re more profitable for businesses than light patterns.
AnthonyMouse 5y ago
> Apple does a really good job of warning me, I feel, and centralizing subscription cancellation etc., and that's huge. Like, if I have to go to your app--or worse, your website--to cancel a subscription? I'm gonna just not use your stuff, because I'm going to forget about it until you whack me for another year or whatever. 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.
- adamlett 5y ago
  * 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%.* 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.
- bertil 5y ago
  > a market for another payment system that has easy cancellations but charges ~5% instead of 30%. 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.
kbenson 5y ago
> Companies will want it, but I'm not sure users will. 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.
- spsful 5y ago
  The issue of subscriptions gets worse --not better-- if there are more companies competing for subscription revenue. Having to use more than one service to manage all your subscriptions would make things even more of a headache, so I don't see how consumers would benefit. 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.
justapassenger 5y ago
If I'm buying a subscription/app from a sketchy dev, sure, I'll happily to default to use Apple, as it's providing me real value in terms of protection. 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.
hatchnyc 5y ago
Is there any doubt but that this is _the_ motivating factor for these companies? They employ all sorts of dark patterns to charge customers on the sly and make cancelling recurring payments as difficult and painful as possible, but at least if they want to sell on the lucrative iOS market they can't do this at the moment. 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.
inopinatus 5y ago
But that already happens. Apple did not invent online payment and subscription. Consumers do not have a problem buying things online outside the walled garden, and most could not tell you when they’re actually using a Stripe form in a WKWebView or whatever; those that can don’t care much either. The most powerful force in play here is consumer indifference, which Apple have been relying upon.
- acdha 5y ago
  Apple would not allow you to open that Stripe form in a web view before, so we don’t really know what consumers prefer. 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.
  - inopinatus 5y ago
    There’s no need to try reasoning things out from first principles. People have been buying online for decades now, and all the experience shows most consumers are indifferent and clueless. If you don’t believe me, ask a non-tech-sector family member what they think Apple Pay is.
    - acdha 5y ago
      > You can stop trying to work things out from first principles. People have been buying online for decades now, and all the experience shows consumers are indifferent and clueless. 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.
brazzledazzle 5y ago
You’re not wrong but it might not apply universally for everyone with every subscription anyway. I’m not really all that frugal but I’ll happily sign up with a credit card through a browser if I see a 30% price difference. 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.
pronlover723 5y ago
I know I'm in the minority but Apple does a shitty job on subscriptions. I frequent 2 countries. As such I need apps that are only available in one country's store (banking apps). In order to download needed updates have to switch stores. Switching stores cancels all subscriptions. 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.
- bertil 5y ago
  I would blame the developper who built the payment system — although, I’m sure if they don’t include that, they loose the sale of their solutions to restaurants. 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.
passivate 5y ago
>. Like, if I have to go to your app--or worse, your website--to cancel a subscription? I'm gonna just not use your stuff, because I'm going to forget about it until you whack me for another year or whatever. 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.

travoc 5y ago

You would really pay a 30% premium on all your digital purchases just to be warned about a subscription expiring next year? You might be an edge case.

eropple 5y ago
Third-party payment providers who I don't select, not being answerable to me as a platform holder, are incentivized to make it hard for me to cancel. Apple doesn't do that. I have better things to worry about than to track this stuff down and I desperately want to think about fewer stupid things in my life. Subscription management is solved and stupid. 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.
- ApolloFortyNine 5y ago
  >If that's an edge case, y'all are wrong. 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.
  - eropple 5y ago
    Devs "deserving the money" is a curious statement. I don't deserve dark patterns and stress in exchange for a subscription, do I? And it doesn't make me feel better, because that's exactly the hellworld we have outside of iOS, but thanks!
- Vespasian 5y ago
  Apple can still enforce in their rules the ability to cancel from one place 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.
- gwoplock 5y ago
  > 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. 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.
  - paulmd 5y ago
    This is my hope as well. This ruling explicitly pushed back against the attacks on App Store review and other Store policies - and as such they can still leverage that into a requirement to implement some API that allows one click control of recurring subscriptions.
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0xf8 5y ago
I am also more than ok to pay that premium for the benefit of centralized subscription management. an additional instance of the “edge case”.
bobthepanda 5y ago
A fair amount of companies makes their subscription cancellation actively hostile in an effort to not get people to do it. To give an example, though you can subscribe online, the NYT requires you to call during only certain hours to a customer service line where you get badgered and questioned like you’re trying to cancel a cable subscription. 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.
- ilikehurdles 5y ago
  This is exactly the example that's been on my mind. Had I known how horrible NYT's unsubscription process is, I would have never subscribed in the first place. I'm sure they extracted an extra month or two out of me because of the friction they introduce, so in management's eyes that's probably a win. I will never use NYT again in the future, but I think a big label letting users know an app isn't using iCloud payments could go a long way to cautioning users about a user-hostile experience. 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.
  - tracker1 5y ago
    Similar opinion for XM... Would never sign up again without a generated card number that is only good for a single charge. I only wanted to cancel one radio of 3 I had at the time. By the third 40+m wait after mysteriously "disconnected" after they couldn't talk me out of it, I cancelled the whole thing.
    - IX-103 5y ago
      Don't get me started on XM. Starting the second year after I bought a car they were calling me several times a week. It took a few years of "No" and blocking any number in my area code that isn't in my contacts (my phone number is not local) for it to stop. Then I brought my car to the dealership to have some recall handled, and the calls have started again....
ahurmazda 5y ago
Another edge case here. For now I trust apple with my credit cards (a lot) more than a bunch of smarmy payment processors (somehow I magically get subscribed to a bunch of things when I use the latter)
- Dayshine 5y ago
  Why on earth wouldn't you be able to use Apple to pay (with the normal 2-3% transaction fee)? Does Apple not support paying in arbitrary websites like Google Pay?
  - djrogers 5y ago
    Yes they do support that.
  - hraedon 5y ago
    Two separate things at play here. Parent is saying they trust Apple to manage their payment options, and since third parties have to go through Apple they don't have to trust a bunch of individual companies to do things right. 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.
- diebeforei485 5y ago
  Developers can use payment methods that don't require credit card data to touch their servers (eg. Stripe, PayPal, Shopify).
Spivak 5y ago
I mean everyone's assuming that non-IAP subscriptions are going to be 30% cheaper but I don't really buy it. If the market has proven that someone will pay $10 for a thing, suddenly offering it for $7 seems like a bad business move.
- wvenable 5y ago
  Many apps already have non-Apple-taxed pricing. So they can just keep price consistency without losing 30%.
  - whoisburbansky 5y ago
    Which apps do this?
    - hoveringhen 5y ago
      YouTube Music / Premium does this if I'm not wrong
      - whoisburbansky 5y ago
        Huh, I was under the impression that the App Store guidelines didn’t let you do that, but maybe that doesn’t apply if you’re Google.
- jclardy 5y ago
  Most likely Apple subs will increase in price. This was the case for Netflix/Spotify for a while until Apple banned the practice (7.99 direct, 9.99 via IAP.)
  - benhurmarcel 5y ago
    It’s still the case for Youtube Premium and Dropbox for example.
- NineStarPoint 5y ago
dntrkv 5y ago
That 30% covers a lot more than just processing payments.
- weixiyen 5y ago
  I assume by that you mean the developer tools to create apps in the first place. 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.
  - fillipvt 5y ago
    So you are saying they have to? Otherwise the iPhone would be useless.
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dylan604 5y ago
You're assuming that the Epics of the world will actually lower their rates the 30%. Epic could just as easily keep the same prices, but now make that extra. That's the issue I have with Epic's arguments. They might lower the rates by a percent to entice people over to their system, but over time pull the cable company routine and just up the rates each time it renews or new version.
- elondaits 5y ago
  It’s almost impossible to analyze Epic’s rates “objectively”. Fortnite is free, but you can pay for in-game currency (V-Bucks) with which you buy cosmetics. You can buy V-Bucks directly (discounted in large amounts), get them through a monthly subscription slightly cheaper, or get a limited amount by playing (more if you buy a season pass which also includes cosmetics). BTW: Cosmetics are EXTREMELY overpriced, because you pay for “exclusivity” (think like USD 20+ for a fully accessorized skin with no effects beyond cosmetic). Even though Epic can claim it lowered the cost of V-Bucks in its store, you can only used them to pay for a small daily selection of arbitrarily overpriced cosmetics that Epic puts in its in-game store… so how much is a V-Buck worth? Nobody knows, and Epic can tweak it by making skins more or less detailed, or by giving away more or less V-Bucks to players and subscribers.
uberduper 5y ago
What makes you so sure it would be 30%? Somewhere a middleman gets their cut. Why wouldn't bigCorp just make you use their payment system at the same price without allowing purchases via Apple at all?
roamerz 5y ago
Do you really think that the digital purchase cost would be 30% lower if you bought it directly through the vendor? The edge case would be that buying directly though the vendor would actually be 30% less.
danudey 5y ago
You think the people who move to their own payment systems are going to drop their prices by 30%, when instead they could keep them the same and make 30% more revenue?
kjreact 5y ago
You think that you’ll get a 30% discount by subscribing via an external website? More likely they’ll give you a small discount to entice you and pocket the difference.
- moogly 5y ago
  Wouldn't it be better if that money went to the actual creator instead of a greedy middleman though? Apple will be fine. They have more money than they know what to do with. Literally. Steve Jobs even asked Warren Buffett WTF to do with their hoard, and that was over 10 years ago now.
  - kjreact 5y ago
    Truthfully, aren’t the only developers who are really affected by this decision mega-corporations anyways? Epic had $5B in revenues in 2020. Should I feel indignant which greedy mega corp gets more money? Apple already lowered the commission to 15% for small developers (under $1M annually) where the additional income really matters.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      Apple's refusal to allow alternative payment methods is (and has been) the issue. They can take 99% for all I care, but their smug refusal to allow alternative payment methods all but confirms that it's a ripoff.

burlesona 5y ago

It doesn’t really matter what customers want. If companies have an option to offer a lesser user experience but keep more revenue, they’ll nearly always take it. The only exception would be if “underdog apps” start seeing “we still use Apple IAP” as a selling point.

skrtskrt 5y ago

Shopify's "Shop Pay" has already introduced a seamless payment interaction across many sites without a need for a separate account or to trust so many people with payment info - the idea that something similar wouldn't be created and get adoption for subscriptions on mobile seems highly unlikely. 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.

bogwog 5y ago

Im sure every random app wont be rolling their own payment system. Paypal’s transaction fees for example are significantly lower than Apple (less than 4% vs Apple’s 30%), and millions of users already have a Paypal account, so they could buy your product without having to create an account or enter payment info. 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.

cto_of_antifa 5y ago
paypal actually does, i used it the other day. they've given their web app a lot of polish recently.
shagie 5y ago
If you're making less than $1M/y, its 15% ( https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/apple-announces-app-store-small-business-program/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/apple-announces-app-s... ) If you're going through PayPal ( https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees 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)?

acdha 5y ago

You'll get no argument from me that Apple's system is pretty good from a consumer standpoint — that's the primary reason why I predicted that it'd remain popular. It's really nice knowing that you can nuke a subscription without getting some dark patterns trying to talk you out of it. 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.

NikolaNovak 5y ago
The other part is, what do the Apple subscription cover in terms of platforms? 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.
- djrogers 5y ago
  That's not a shortcoming of Apple's system - every subscription I have using IAP has a way to tie to to an existing or new account for use on other devices. If the Guardian decided not to do that, that's kinda crappy and 100% on them.
- biztos 5y ago
  I ended up canceling a magazine subscription I’d done with Apple, because there was no way to use my Apple credentials on the web site. It was app-only, and the app was crap compared to the web version. I might resubscribe but… friction…
- TYPE_FASTER 5y ago

layer8 5y ago

One drawback of the current situation is that for example you can’t purchase ebooks through the iOS Kindle app (because Amazon can’t/won’t let Apple take their 30% cut there), and the app can’t even link to the corresponding product page on Amazon. If the new ruling enables such purchases and linking, then as a consumer I’m very much in favor of it.

dylan604 5y ago
But yet you can by directly from Amazon in their app without using Apple. How can Apple say that they cannot sell eBooks directly on Kindle app, but allow direct sells from the retail store?
- djrogers 5y ago
  You can buy physical goods in the Amazon app, but not digital books.
- layer8 5y ago
  You can’t buy Kindle books with the iOS Amazon app. It only allows to download a free sample. 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.
- jclardy 5y ago
  It's because then Apple Books would have to compete with the Kindle app on fair terms. IE Apple is being anti-competitive and giving their own app an advantage. This is basically a part of what the original lawsuit was about.
- bertil 5y ago
  Apple doesn’t ban sales of eBook, but claims that those are software and would apply a 30% processing fee to them like on all virtual goods. They also demand the price to be comparable to other sources, so Amazon has to decide between 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.

webmobdev 5y ago

> Companies will want it, but I'm not sure users will. 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.

yyyk 5y ago

Apple doesn't need to monopolize payment to centralize subscription cancellation. More importantly, Apple's fee structure prefers cheaper trashy apps over expansive to produce quality apps. I hope users will feel the difference with an overall better app selection. 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.

paulmd 5y ago
There is absolutely no causal mechanism where reducing fees by 5-10% will magically produce an improvement in app quality and variety.
- yyyk 5y ago
  It's called 'incentives'. Not a difficult concept, admittedly a bit foreign to the centrally managed iOS ecosystem.

tracker1 5y ago

Worse still, is having to re-install a removed application when the renewal hit in order to then kill your account that was created during first run of said app.

FridgeSeal 5y ago

After using Apple Pay, centralising my subscriptions, and things like Apple-managed IAP’s I’ve little desire to go back to handing my card details over to n different apps, with varying and unknown degrees of payment security. Centralising the subscriptions is worth it alone.

rhizome 5y ago

People/apps that use alternate payment SDKs aren't going to care how difficult it is to unsubscribe, and very few people (citation needed) care enough to look into an app's cancellation flow before buying in.

paulmd 5y ago
It’s worse than that. Developers will actually seek out alternate payment providers that allow dark patterns. The whole reason dark patterns exist in the first place is because they’re more profitable for businesses than light patterns.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago

> Apple does a really good job of warning me, I feel, and centralizing subscription cancellation etc., and that's huge. Like, if I have to go to your app--or worse, your website--to cancel a subscription? I'm gonna just not use your stuff, because I'm going to forget about it until you whack me for another year or whatever. 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.

adamlett 5y ago
* 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%.* 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.
bertil 5y ago
> a market for another payment system that has easy cancellations but charges ~5% instead of 30%. 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.

kbenson 5y ago

> Companies will want it, but I'm not sure users will. 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.

spsful 5y ago
The issue of subscriptions gets worse --not better-- if there are more companies competing for subscription revenue. Having to use more than one service to manage all your subscriptions would make things even more of a headache, so I don't see how consumers would benefit. 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.

justapassenger 5y ago

If I'm buying a subscription/app from a sketchy dev, sure, I'll happily to default to use Apple, as it's providing me real value in terms of protection. 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.

hatchnyc 5y ago

Is there any doubt but that this is _the_ motivating factor for these companies? They employ all sorts of dark patterns to charge customers on the sly and make cancelling recurring payments as difficult and painful as possible, but at least if they want to sell on the lucrative iOS market they can't do this at the moment. 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.

inopinatus 5y ago

But that already happens. Apple did not invent online payment and subscription. Consumers do not have a problem buying things online outside the walled garden, and most could not tell you when they’re actually using a Stripe form in a WKWebView or whatever; those that can don’t care much either. The most powerful force in play here is consumer indifference, which Apple have been relying upon.

acdha 5y ago
Apple would not allow you to open that Stripe form in a web view before, so we don’t really know what consumers prefer. 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.
- inopinatus 5y ago
  There’s no need to try reasoning things out from first principles. People have been buying online for decades now, and all the experience shows most consumers are indifferent and clueless. If you don’t believe me, ask a non-tech-sector family member what they think Apple Pay is.
  - acdha 5y ago
    > You can stop trying to work things out from first principles. People have been buying online for decades now, and all the experience shows consumers are indifferent and clueless. 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.

brazzledazzle 5y ago

You’re not wrong but it might not apply universally for everyone with every subscription anyway. I’m not really all that frugal but I’ll happily sign up with a credit card through a browser if I see a 30% price difference. 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.

pronlover723 5y ago

I know I'm in the minority but Apple does a shitty job on subscriptions. I frequent 2 countries. As such I need apps that are only available in one country's store (banking apps). In order to download needed updates have to switch stores. Switching stores cancels all subscriptions. 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.

bertil 5y ago
I would blame the developper who built the payment system — although, I’m sure if they don’t include that, they loose the sale of their solutions to restaurants. 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.

passivate 5y ago

>. Like, if I have to go to your app--or worse, your website--to cancel a subscription? I'm gonna just not use your stuff, because I'm going to forget about it until you whack me for another year or whatever. 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.