this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
161 points (87.4% liked)
Technology
59589 readers
2838 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Amazon doesn't have to give Apple a huge chunk of cash though. Apps don't pay anything to Apple for real-world stuff being sold. Amazon pays nothing for the tens of billions of dollars purchased every year from iPhones. The only thing they pay Apple for is if someone uses the Prime Video app to buy or rent something or subscribe to Prime Video, but who does not already have an Amazon account (with saved card) that they're signed into. We're probably talking a number measured in the thousands of dollars. Uber, for example, pays Apple nothing other than their annual developer account fee (or fees, assuming they have multiple accounts).
Nobody is going to actually use this program so there's no real world extra accounting cost. Previously Apple charged 30% for a combined payment handling and commission. A court determined they had to let developers handle their own payments so Apple complied and said the commission is 27%. It's invariably cheaper to just stick with Apple's 30%.
Everyone always wants more money. Developers would love to pay less; Apple would love to make more. The 30% max fee (in practice less for many developers) has been pretty successful for everyone involved. I think people can quibble over the "right" number, but I don't think it's wrong that there's a sales commission for access to a profitable platform.
Important to note that the 30% cut is also only on developers that bring in >$1M in revenue from the App Store and in app purchases. Which is less than 1% of developers.
For those under $1M it’s only 15%, which is on par or cheaper than what developing your own payment processing or to use another third party processor.
deleted
No, Apple only charges commission on purchases within the app using apples system. You can implement your own and tell people to make a purchase they need to go to your website.
That’s what Netflix has always done as one example.
deleted
The article isn’t exactly clear, but it seems like Apple is going to allow third party processing for in app purchases now alongside using the App Store payment system, which will be subject to the App Store fee plus whatever the third party processing fee is, but linking to an external website will not. Apple is requiring information about revenue generated from third party payment systems within the app to set the appropriate App Store fee. 12 or 27% now down from 15 and 30%.
They are also explicitly going to allow apps to link to external websites for payment processing, which won’t be subject to any App Store fee.