Payment via third-party services won’t come until later

The past 15 months have been overshadowed by a major conflict in the app industry: Apple removed the popular game Fortnite from the App Store in August 2020, the reason being that it bypassed the company’s official payment system. No wonder, Apple puts almost 30 percent in its pockets for every transaction, the App Store has become an important financial pillar for the group.

What followed was an ongoing dispute between Epic Games and Apple, which has already brought some interesting decisions to light. Although the allegation that Apple had formed an unfair monopoly has been dismissed, the current regulations violate local laws in California.

As a first step, Apple should therefore enable developers to implement links to third-party payment services in their apps. The user could then take out a Spotify or Netflix subscription without the company having to pay a commission to Apple. The deadline to implement this new practice was yesterday, December 9, 2021.

Nothing has happened yet. Apple was awarded an extension one day before the deadline. Specifically, the company can now avoid the implementation for so long that there are appeals proceedings against the decision. And as you can already guess, this can take some time.

Specifically, it could be an extension of a full year, until then some interesting decisions will be made in the battle between Apple and Epic Games. Both sides have their arguments and of course not only stand up for their users.

While Apple says that opening the app store can lead to more privacy and security problems, greed for profit is likely to play a role as well. It is similar with Epic Games, which could offer in-app purchases more cheaply, but on the other hand is likely to put more money into its own pocket.

Via Gizmodo