If, in the United States, Apple has obtained a reprieve before having to accept third-party payments for purchases on the App Store, in South Korea, the apple brand is ordered to comply with the demand. She will have to authorize alternative payments to stay in compliance with the law.
Source: Unsplash / Laurenz Heymann
South Korea had promised to bend Google and Apple in the face of third-party payment systems. It is now done. After having obtained that the Play Store authorizes other means of paying its purchases of application on the store, but also of integrated purchases in use, it is the turn of the App Store to submit to the local legislation.
According to Korea Herald, the law passed last summer, which requires application stores to authorize other payment systems offered by developers, will also apply to the apple brand. Apple was ordered to comply with the law on pain of heavy penalties (fine of 3% of its local turnover).
Alternative payment systems provided … by Apple
No more taking 15-30% commissions on purchases, in your opinion? It would be without counting on the sense of business and negotiations of Apple. True, Tim Cook and his people have lost their monopoly on Korea’s integrated App Store payment system and will have to accept WeChat or PayPal-like payments, but they’ve once again found a way to bounce back in parallel. Because Apple will also offer developers an alternative payment system at a reduced price, as requested by the Korea Communications Commission (KCC).
One way to take a little money in the process from smaller developers who do not necessarily have access to internal solutions, even if this will always be less compared to the usual commission fees. But it also shows that Apple won its case in protecting and securing its App Store, its hobbyhorse throughout the lawsuit against Epic Games. The Californian company keeps insisting that it is ready to open its App Store to third-party payments if it obtains guarantees on the security of transactions and transfer between its store and payment systems. It is also this point that allowed him to obtain a postponement to the United States in the implementation of the sanctions.
After Japan and Korea, the rest of the world?
If in the United States, Apple has obtained a stay in court and can still benefit from purchases on the App Store via its payment system, in Japan already, the company had to find an agreement to avoid a procedure. It is now possible for certain applications (Reader Apps) to share a link with users to access payment methods outside the App Store. This decision by the KCC to extend this to all applications is nonetheless an important victory for developers who are demanding to extricate themselves from Apple’s grip on payments. And it could give ideas to other countries that want to impose the same rules on the giants of GAFAM.
In addition, the amendment adopted in 2020 also prohibits the rule of the App Store which aims to dissuade developers from marketing their applications on other platforms. For the moment, no date of entry into application has been indicated, nor the amount of the “reduced price” payment system.
To follow us, we invite you to download our Android and iOS application. You will be able to read our articles, files, and watch our latest YouTube videos.