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0 pointsmicrotherion5y ago0 comments

Apple does not charge the fees just for the payment processing.

Ultimately, Apple would like to earn money from the products they make. There are a variety of models to do so:

* You can sell the hardware, sell OS upgrades, and let third parties sell apps without taking a cut. This was the original Mac model.

* You can sell the hardware, give away OS upgrades, and privilege third party developers who give you a cut, while preserving a way to side load. This is the current Mac model.

* You can sell the hardware, give away OS upgrades, and take a cut from third party apps. This is the current iOS model.

* You largely let others build and sell the hardware, give away OS upgrades, take a voluntary cut from developers, and sell or monetize the user's data. This is the Android model.

* You give away the hardware and OS upgrades and live off venture capital. This is a popular startup model.

Each of these is viable to some extent. None is 100% popular with customers.

But what some people seem to be asking for is "Gilette, but give away razors and adopt an open standard for the razor blades".

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scarface745y ago

I didn’t say that Apple does just make money from payment processing I said they could. There are dozens of payment processors that make money just by being credit card processors. It would make things a lot simpler and they could get a cut of payments that they can’t get right now from companies that won’t do in app purchases through the App Store. Netflix and Spotify were consistently two of the “top paid” apps when they had in app subscriptions. Now Apple doesn’t get anything from them.

They could even charge slightly higher fees than most credit card companies just like AmEx does. They have the infrastructure in place via Apple Pay.

Since Apple Pay already supports the industry standard Web Payments API. They could convince more companies to accept Apple Pay on the web without being “locked in” to Apple Pay since if you implemented the payments API, it would also work on Android with Android Pay.

Apple Pay is an open standard that integrates with your standard credit card processing flow.

staticman25y ago

This has to do with Apple using Mafia style tactics to demand 30% of all economic activity. It has nothing to do with payment processors as such.

LexGray5y ago

But what percentage would developers consider appropriate? Apple works partially as a consumer advocate in this space preventing many shady practices through their draconian rules. There is definitely value preventing developers from innovating over customer expectations.

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scarface745y ago

What is your point? Didn’t I just say that Apple should scrap IAP and just become a payment processor by using Apple Pay?

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