[ericmay]

I don't feel great either, but that's because prices aren't coming down, instead one billion dollar company just keeps more money than another billion (trillion I guess) dollar company, and we've lost some convenience features that Apple maintained, without any gain.

[SXX]

This is not only affects Epic. Basically any other app, game or SaaS developer can now earn more money because payment processing costing them 1-3% instead of 30%.

And small companies are hit by 30% platform tax the most. More money for small compsnies mean more competition.

[nodamage]

Not necessarily.

For starters, small companies are paying 15%, not 30%.

I'm also not sure where a small company can find a payment processor that will only charge 1%. Stripe charges 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction.

If you have a $4.99 in-app purchase that will cost you 44 cents per transaction to use Stripe vs 75 cents to use Apple's IAP.

But Stripe does not act as a merchant of record so you are responsible for remitting sales tax yourself. Registering for and remitting sales tax in every jurisdiction where you have nexus adds huge administrative overhead to a small company.

If you want to avoid this overhead, Paddle will act as a merchant of record for you, but then you're paying 5% plus 50 cents which adds up to 75 cents on a $4.99 purchase anyway.

Linking to external payments also reduces conversion rates (https://www.revenuecat.com/blog/growth/iap-vs-web-purchases-...) compared to using IAP.

Taken all together, depending on their pricing structure, small companies may very well be financially better off sticking with IAP rather than linking to external payments anyway.

[johnnyanmac]

>small companies are paying 15%, not 30%.

When talking in the grand scheme of this case, the 15% arose out of these proceedings. It was 30 back on in 2018.

But yes, overall most people will stick with Apple regardless. I still see it as a win that companies who want to put the work in to go around apple can. That simply seems reasonable in my eyes.

[ericmay]

> When talking in the grand scheme of this case, the 15% arose out of these proceedings. It was 30 back on in 2018.

I'm not sure about the timeline, but in general the reduction to 15% for small developers was due to market signals as much as it was anything else. Both Apple and Google need small developers to continue to create new apps and if the 30% is onerous to small developers (which I think it probably is) they'll lower it to attract more products and services.

> But yes, overall most people will stick with Apple regardless. I still see it as a win that companies who want to put the work in to go around apple can. That simply seems reasonable in my eyes

When you think about it, there's maybe half a dozen companies that truly could put in similar work to Apple or Google in creating and maintaining these stores and platforms at the scale and with the features and security that they have built. Most people are going to stick with Apple and Google, except when one of those large competitors like Meta decides to bypass those stores and create its own and continue to nudge folks to their store for various features or downloads or whatever. It introduces friction for no obvious benefit to customers.

You can argue that 3rd party app stores will be more permissive in what they allow, but most of the things that people complain about "scary surveillance" or other onerous regulations for example have to also be followed by any legitimate App Store. So all you've really done is create worse versions of the Apple or Google App Store that siphon away applications. It reduces the profit margins of Apple or Google but it doesn't benefit customers.

[daheza]

I've always wanted to do some small business, maybe an app but to get started feels so daunting. This information you provided is great and makes me feel like there's room to know more.

Are there any good places to grow this kind of knowledge? How to use payment processors? How to actually setup a business and get paid yourself?

I don't want to get into the whole founder ethos, I just want to make something and get paid for it.