EU iPhone owners are greeted with a prominent warning at the top of the App Store for apps that provide external purchases, above even the app’s name and icon.
Looks like Apple is punishing apps in the European Union that use external payment systems with a warning, decorated with a big red “!” triangle icon. This is another hostile move toward App Store developers who dare implement web purchases.
Unlike in the United States, where apps offering web purchases must have corresponding In-App Purchases, apps that are carried on the App Store in the European Union can offer web purchases exclusively.
Apple is punishing EU iPhone apps with external payments
“This app does not support the App Store’s private and secure payment system. It uses external purchases,” reads the warning. Instacar is among the apps that show this warning on its App Store page. Instacar is unavailable in the US App Store.
It seems Apple shows this warning only for EU apps with external purchases that don’t offer corresponding In-App Purchase versions. It’s quite intrusive and designed to scare people away. For starters, the box takes up five lines of text. Worse, it’s positioned at the top of the App Store pages, right above the app’s name and icon.
Michael Tsai notes that EU iPhone owners who have already purchased an app won’t see this message because the app can automatically update itself to add external payments without the user having to go back to the App Store. Apple’s move is especially interesting knowing the Digital Markets Act mandated that there can’t be scare screens at the time of purchase.
You could argue that this warning technically isn’t a scare screen. Be that as it may, it does feel like a flagrant violation of what the European Commission told Apple to do. The European Commission has already fined Apple half a billion euros for violating the Digital Markets Act. Apple’s wording suggests that apps without In-App Purchases that don’t pay Apple’s fee are probably not secure.
John Gruber, writing on his Daring Fireball blog:
Online payments through, say, Stripe — which zillions of companies use — are completely private and secure today. Amazon payments are completely private and secure. I’m sure there remain sketchy corners of the internet, but for the most part, all mainstream online payments today are private and secure. Apple’s IAP system has numerous advantages and user-centric features. (If Apple were actively competing, it would have many more.) But the fact that it’s “private and secure” is no longer distinguishing at all.
EU apps with web purchases don’t have to pay Apple’s 30% commission fee, meaning Apple is incentivized to discourage EU iPhone owners from buying cheaper web subscriptions. To be clear, this is unrelated to the Epic suit in the United States, as this warning does not show for apps on the US App Store.