StoreKit External Purchase Entitlement for Netherlands
In a message posted on its developer site late on Friday, Apple announced that it will comply with a Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) ruling that compels the company to allow third-party payment services to pay for in-app purchases in dating apps. Dutch dating apps that link out to or use a third-party in-app payment provider will still need to pay a commission to Apple on transactions.
Developers will need to create and maintain a completely separate app binary which includes special entitlements, and is only made available in the Netherlands App Store.
Because we do not believe these orders are in our users’ best interests, we have appealed the ACM’s decision to a higher court.
The piecemeal regulations popping up around the world are so odd. Only dating apps and only in the Netherlands. Again, alternate payment processing in-app is not the answer, if Google and Apple are still going to take their cut of each transaction. Just send users to the web to process payments outside the app, and stipulate that apps must be allowed to link to their websites.
Interesting question is how they’re going to collect these commissions absent the ability to intercept purchase data; perhaps they view this small-scale experiment (one type of app in one small-ish market) as a good chance to work on that.
Now that Apple has announced changes, the ACM wants to assess whether those changes meet the requirements of its previous ruling, according to a press release. As part of its probe into the changes, the ACM will meet with dating app providers, such as The Match Group, which owns Tinder, to ensure Apple’s changes sufficiently address concerns.
Previously:
