Apple to Allow Alternative Payment Systems in App Store in South Korea
Apple will let App Store developers offer alternative payment systems in South Korea after the country passed a law that bans app store operators from requiring developers to use their own in-app purchase systems, reports The Korea Herald.
Apple still plans to charge a reduced fee on purchases made through alternative payment systems, according to plans the company submitted to the Korea Communications Commission. Apple did not indicate when the new policy will take effect or what its commission structure will be for alternative payments, the report said.
"We look forward to working with the KCC and our developer community on a solution that benefits our Korean users," Apple said in a statement shared with The Korea Herald. "Apple has a great deal of respect for Korea's laws and a strong history of collaboration with the country's talented app developers. Our work will always be guided by keeping the App Store a safe and trusted place for our users to download the apps they love."
In November, Google announced it would also let developers offer alternative in-app billing systems in its Play Store in South Korea, and said it would reduce its fee for alternative payment systems by four percentage points. For the "vast majority" of developers, Google said its fee would drop from 15% for transactions through Google Play's billing system to 11% for transactions through an alternate billing system.
Popular Stories
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple is set to unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, so the software update is a little over six weeks away from being announced. Below, we recap rumored features and changes planned for the iPhone with iOS 18. iOS 18 will reportedly be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, with new ChatGPT-inspired generative AI features, a more customizable Home Screen, and much more....
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
Top Rated Comments
In-app purchases of stuff you are not a man-in-the-middle distributor of, and you aren't doing the payment processing anymore. What entitles you to ANY money?
Walmart only gets the initial magazine purchase, not a cut of the subscription made from the included postcard.
Target only gets the initial iPhone sale, not a part of your app purchases or your Apple Fitness subscription fees.
Why should digital be any different? Its still a mob shakedown. Nice app you've got there, it would be a real shame if something happened to it.
First cracks starting to appear in the garden walls. Only a matter of time before the EU follows suit.
Won't happen here in the US anytime though. Apple pays Congress too well.
It'll cost Apple resources to do auditing of apps. And it'll be more costly for developers to use an alternative payment because they have to spend resources to keep track of how much they earn and pay Apple by check or bank deposit.
If my app is making decent money, I'd never cheat Apple out of the commission because they can take my app offline anytime. That's way too risky.
If I'm an iOS developer, I'd never use a 3rd party payment system for this reason alone. Too much hassle.
Basically, allowing 3rd party payment systems don't help developer save money. The only things that would help are side loading, alternative app stores, or laws governing commission fees for app stores.
When someone downloads a free app and purchases in-app subscription, Apple has made no profit unless they charge a commission for the in-app purchase.