Patreon IAP Deadline of November 2026
Sarah Perez (MacRumors, Hacker News, Slashdot):
Creator platform Patreon is taking issue with Apple’s new mandate that forces all creators to move to a subscription billing model, which now has a new transition deadline of November 1, 2026.
[…]
The company said it would switch creators to subscription billing in November 2024, and creators could choose whether to increase their subscription prices to cover Apple’s fees. In addition, creators could opt to delay changes until November 2025 if they needed more time. However, they wouldn’t be able to offer subscriptions in the app until they adopted Apple’s in-app purchases.
Last May, Patreon took advantage of newly loosened App Store guidelines resulting from the U.S. court ruling in Epic v. Apple to offer creators the ability to process web payments from links in Patreon’s app.
Patreon—at least in the US—is now allowed to use external payments, but this is still creating a mess.
In 2024, Apple mandated that Patreon move all creators onto subscription billing by November of 2025, or risk being removed from the App Store. Last May, after a landmark court decision, Apple told us the timeline of that mandate was no longer in effect.
Apple has now reversed course again, reimposing their subscription billing mandate with a new transition deadline of November 1, 2026.
We strongly disagree with this decision. Creators need consistency and clarity in order to build healthy, long-term businesses. Instead, creators using legacy billing will now have to endure the whiplash of another policy reversal – the third such change from Apple in the past 18 months.
Over the years, we have proposed multiple tools and features to Apple that we could’ve built to allow creators using legacy billing to transition on their own timelines, with more support added in. Unfortunately, Apple has continually declined them.
For several years now, they have been trying really hard to get creators to switch to daily billing whether they like it or not, with a series of intrusive nags and dark patterns. E.g., the “Settings” tab always has an “unread” alert on it reminding me that I have not made the “recommended” change.
Now they’re going to force everyone to switch, and they’re blaming Apple for it. And, to be clear, fuck Apple, but also fuck Patreon, this is their choice and it’s going to mean that I can no longer use their service.
[…]
I sell monthly memberships to a physical nightclub. The memberships begin on the first of the month. I fulfill and mail the physical membership cards on the first of the month. If you make me switch to daily billing, that means I will have to do merch fulfillment on a daily basis instead, and I simply cannot do that.
[…]
I know for a fact that none -- zero, 0% -- of my patrons have signed up using the iOS app. I know this because I had to warn them away from it, due to the 30% Apple Tax, and all of them complied. All of them. The iOS app is utterly meaningless to me and to my patrons.
Especially weird when we have just had the stories about Goldman Sachs having to get out of running the Apple credit card because Apple insisted on billing everyone on the first of the month (among other reasons).
For per-creation billing creators: Migration requires manual support from our team. If you’d like to make the switch, contact Support and we’ll help guide you through the process.
Previously:
- Closing Setapp Mobile Marketplace
- External Payments From the Patreon App
- Creator Platforms and the App Store
- Apple Going After Patreon
