[isthatsoup]

Apple wouldn't be paying anything remotely like that rate - if they are, everybody involved in negotiating it needs to be fired. You're off by several orders of magnitude, therefore your conclusions based on the wrongly assumed cost structure are baseless.

[crazygringo]

Do you have any data to back that up?

Off by "several orders of magnitude" means instead of Apple paying the standard $0.33 on a $1 app, they would be paying $0.00033 (that's three orders of magnitude smaller) or less, because that's how orders of magnitude work.

Which is nonsensical considering it's easy to get a credit card that pays back $0.02 in rewards, which sets a reasonable floor.

Sounds like your claim is the baseless one here, sorry.

I would be curious to know what large online retailers do negotiate paying on single $1 purchases from someone who knows, though.

[isthatsoup]

I don't have any data I can share because obviously negotiated rates are confidential... what planet do you live on?

Apple is going to be among the very largest merchants in the world by card processing volumes - it's actually ludicrous/naive/cute that you think they would have the same rate as a random family corner shop.

I'll give you a hint: the flat rate component definitely goes away over a certain volume. The % component then shrinks significantly too.

I would recommend you stop talking confidently about things you clearly have no experience with - card processing rates for large merchants.

That's about as much detail as I feel able to divulge.

[ineedasername]

$0.99 or $1 is a pretty common price for small single-purpose apps or for an in-app purchase. I think it's fair to say there's no way Apple is paying anything close to $0.33 for those many, many, many transactions, losing $0.03 on each one. If I had to take a wild shot in the dark, I'd guess Apple is paying $0.05 to $0.10 for those.

Of course this is part of the problem: We can't even properly evaluate the situation because this side of it is an opaque black box.