| 43% more, in point of fact. If an IAP is $15, then $4.5 of that goes to Apple. If you priced the direct payment option at $10.50, then $15 is 43% more expensive. And this is the whole reason Apple doesn't want developers to be able to offer both IAPs and direct payment at the same time... it would make Apple look like the bad guy (a horrifying thought!), and they might feel pressured to lower their percentage to something more reasonable. If Apple would switch to a usage based model more like AWS's where they charge for actual resource consumption (review requests, app store bandwidth, etc., maybe even with some kind of "free tier" to help very small developers who are still paying $99/year) then that would make more sense... but a 30% surcharge for every transaction is just absurd. If credit card companies tried to charge 30%, the uproar would be so loud that no would be able to sleep for days, and you know businesses would instantly be offering steep discounts for people paying in cash. Apple has demonstrated that they want to eventually charge a 30% tax on all economic activity[0]... the App Store is more than just a place to download Angry Birds these days. Apple's 30% transaction fee is unsustainable. (I feel the same about Google's Play Store fees too, but at least Android allows sideloading and PWAs support push notifications there, giving developers and consumers some options.) [0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/technology/apple-app-stor... |