To provide more insight, this is what the process is:<p>* There are two new entitlements related to this, which you ask Apple to give you if you're a dating app.<p>* Once you get the entitlements, you need to create a new version of your app (it cannot be the same as your international one) that will ship <i>exclusively</i> in the Netherlands with that entitlement.<p>* Details of how this entitlement work will come at a later date.<p>* Apple will still charge a commission on these purchases, the details of which will also come at a later date.<p>* It is your privilege/responsibility to conflict resolution with regards to refunds and such.<p>In essence, Apple complied with the law in the narrowest terms they could, but they did indeed change things and I suspect many companies will go through this process even if it's made somewhat inconvenient. I guess what remains to be seen is if these entitlements slowly get rolled out in other countries as they also enact legislation to require it.
>The ruling allows dating app developers to avoid the commission fee between 15 to 30 percent Apple charges<p>Was this actually confirmed? I remember in the epic vs apple lawsuit (in the US), the media reported something similar, but if you read the decision more carefully, it explicitly says that apple was still entitled to their 30%/15% cut. The logic was that the 30%/15% cut wasn't the fee paid for processing payments, it was also the fee paid for access to the ecosystem, SDK, and placement on the app store.
Developers still have to pay Apple a commission on transactions.
<a href="https://developer.apple.com/support/storekit-external-entitlement/" rel="nofollow">https://developer.apple.com/support/storekit-external-entitl...</a><p>As in the Epic case, this interestingly expands the number of transactions that apple could potentially claim commissions for (in-app and out-of-app) depending on the specific definition of a transaction. In the case of dating apps nearly all user-activity is within the app, so Apple could claim that all transactions for iOS uses are within scope.<p>This will of course be negotiated and settled in some way, but as long as the 30% cut has not been deemed illegal, Apple can still demand the cut on relevant transactions.
I wonder if this law is similar with legislation in other EU countries? My impression is that consumer legislation usually is.
If it is. This might end up being EU wide in the future.
Everyone is quoting 30%.<p>For the majority of apps it's 15%.<p>That commission is <i>not</i> a payment processing fee, it's very clearly a platform commission as has been common in the industry for 30-40 years at this point.<p>All this (and the similar rulings elsewhere) seem to confirm is that<p>* A developer can use their own preferred payment processor<p>* A developer still has to pay the platform commission<p>Finally, no one in their right mind should think that even if there was a reduction in commission that prices would decrease. We already have direct evidence: Both Google and Apple dropped platform commission to 15% for the vast majority of apps and there was no reduction in app prices. Additionally it is common sense: app devs already know that you will pay X for an app, if they get an arbitrary reduction in expenses through any mechanism why would they reduce their prices? This is the same flaw present in trickle-down economics. The price for <i>anything</i> is determined by what the market will bare, not the cost of production - this is as true for an app, as it is for an NFT, as it is for a banana.
According to Dutch authorities, dating apps were first on the list because they generated the most complaints. They don't confirm or deny that this will continue with other apps.
So theoretically a dating app could today add a PayPal button or stripe pay box.<p>They don't even need to go through appstore review if they add it to a webview server side.<p>So... Have any apps done this yet? Seems like the kind of thing that could be pushed out in a few hours by some teams.
And the mighty walled garden breaks into smaller walled gardens. Eventually each country will have its own version of each app to comply with local laws.